gay twilight
by elsannafan55
Summary: Twilight is good but what would be better? If it was gay. The majority of the writing of this particular fic is all the work of Stephanie Meyer née Morgan. I am responsible only for editing; changing pronouns and names, lessening the intensity of Edward and Beau’s codependency, and adding like 200 words or smth of specifically gay content. Pls let me have ur thoughts.
1. preface/first sight

I'd never given much thought to how I would die - though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. That ought to count for something, right?

I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.

MY MOM DROVE ME TO THE AIRPORT WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED DOWN. Though it was January everywhere else, it was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, and the sky was bright blue. I had on my favorite t-shirt—the Monty Python one with the swallows and the coconut that Mom had given to me two Christmases ago. It didn't quite fit anymore, but that didn't matter. I wouldn't be needing t-shirts again soon.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this insignificant town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its depressing gloom that my mom escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been forced to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally started making ultimatums; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

Yet somehow, I now found myself exiled to Forks for the rest of my high school career. A year and a half. Eighteen months. It felt like a prison sentence. Eighteen months, hard time. When I slammed the car door behind me, it made a sound like the clang of iron bars locking into place.

Okay, just a tad melodramatic there. Of course, this was my choice. Self-imposed exile.

Didn't make it any easier.

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the dry heat and the big, sprawling city. And I loved living with my mom, where I was needed.

"You don't have to do this," my mom said to me—the last of a hundred times—just before I got to the TSA post.

My mom says we look so much alike that I could use her for a shaving mirror. It's not entirely true, though I don't look much like my dad at all. Her chin is pointy and her lips full, which is not like me. And I had my dad's eyes – brown, boring. Still, we get told that we look more like brother and sister than mother and son all the time, and though she pretends not to, she loves it.

Staring into her wide, worried eyes, I felt panicked. I'd been taking care of my mom for my whole life. I mean, I'm sure there must have been a time, probably when I was still in diapers, that I wasn't in charge of the bills and paperwork and cooking and general level-headedness, but I couldn't remember it.

Was leaving my mom to fend for herself really the right thing to do? It had seemed like it was, during the months I'd struggled toward this decision. But it felt all kinds of wrong now.

Of course she had Phil these days, so the bills would probably get paid on time, there would be food in the fridge, gas in the car, and someone to call when she got lost…She didn't need me as much anymore.

"I want to go," I lied. I'd never been a good liar, but I'd been saying this lie so much lately that it almost sounded convincing now.

"Tell Charlie I said hi."

"I will."

"I'll see you soon," she promised. "You can come home whenever you want—I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

But I knew what it would cost her to do that.

"Don't worry about me," I insisted. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."

She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I walked through the metal detectors, and she was gone.

It's a three-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying's never bothered me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.

Charlie had really been pretty decent about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him sort of permanently for the first time. He'd already gotten me registered for high school, and was going to help me get a car.

But it would be awkward. Neither of us was what you'd call extroverted—probably a necessary thing for living with my mother. But aside from that, what was there to say? It wasn't like I'd kept the way I felt about Forks a secret.

When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. It wasn't an omen, just inevitable. I'd said my goodbyes to the sun.

Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite my serious lack of funds, was that I hated driving around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

I stumbled off the plane into Charlie's awkward, one-armed hug.

"It's good to see you, Beau," he said, smiling as he automatically steadied me. We patted each other's shoulders, embarrassed, and then stepped back. "You haven't changed much. How's Renée?"

"Mom's great. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't supposed to call him Charlie to his face.

"You really feel okay about leaving her?"

We both understood that this question wasn't about my own personal happiness. It was about whether I was shirking my responsibility to look after her. This was the reason Charlie'd never fought Mom about custody; he knew she needed me.

"Yeah. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sure."

"Fair enough."

I only had two big duffel bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for the Washington climate. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it still wasn't much. I could handle both of them, but Charlie insisted on taking one.

It threw my balance off a little—not that I was ever really balanced, especially since the growth spurt. My foot caught on the lip of the exit door and the bag swung out and hit the guy trying to get in.

"Oh, sorry."

The guy wasn't much older than me, and he was a lot shorter, but he stepped up to my chest with his chin raised high. I could see tattoos on both sides of his neck. A small woman with hair dyed solid black stared menacingly at me from his other side.

"Sorry?" she repeated, like my apology had been offensive somehow.

"Er, yeah?"

And then the woman noticed Charlie, who was in uniform. Charlie didn't even have to say anything. He just looked at the guy, who backed up a half-step and suddenly seemed a lot younger, and then the girl, whose sticky red lips settled into a pout. Without another word, they ducked around me and headed into the tiny terminal.

Charlie and I both shrugged at the same time. It was funny how we had some of the same mannerisms when we didn't spend much time together. Maybe it was genetic.

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," Charlie announced when we were strapped into the cruiser and on our way.

"What kind of car?" I asked, suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?"

"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the small Indian reservation on the nearby coastline.

"No."

"He and his wife used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.

That would explain why I didn't remember her. I do a good job of blocking painful things from my memory.

"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."

"What year is it?" I could see from the change in his expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.

"Well, Billy's had a lot of work done on the engine—it's only a few years old, really."

Did he think I would give up that easily?

"When did he buy it?"

"He bought it in 1984, I think."

"Did he buy it new?"

"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties—or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.

"Ch—Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix anything that broke, and I couldn't afford a mechanic.…"

"Really, Beau, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."

The thing, I thought to myself…it had possibilities—as a nickname, at the very least.

"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that part was the deal killer.

"Well, son, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie glanced sideways at me with a hopeful expression.

Wow. Free.

"You didn't need to do that, Dad. I was going to buy myself a car."

"I don't mind. I want you to be happy here." He was looking ahead at the road when he said this. Charlie had never been comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud. Another thing we had in common. So I was looking straight ahead as I responded.

"That's amazing, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it." No need to add that he was talking about impossibilities. Wouldn't help anything for him to suffer along with me. And I never looked a free truck in the mouth—or rather engine.

"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by my thanks.

We exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet, and that was pretty much it for conversation. We stared out the windows.

It was probably beautiful or something. Everything was green: the trees were covered in moss, both the trunks and the branches, the ground blanketed with ferns. Even the air had turned green by the time it filtered down through the leaves.

It was too green—an alien planet.

Eventually we made it to Charlie's. He still lived in the small, two-bedroom house that he'd bought with my mother in the early days of their marriage. Those were the only kind of days their marriage had—the early ones. There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new—well, new to me—truck. It was a faded red color, with big, curvy fenders and a rounded cab.

And I loved it. I wasn't really a car guy, so I was kind of surprised by my own reaction. I mean, I didn't even know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron monsters that never gets damaged—the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had just destroyed.

"Wow, Dad, it's awesome! Thanks!" Serious enthusiasm this time. Not only was the truck strangely cool, but now I wouldn't have to walk two miles in the rain to school in the morning. Or accept a ride in the cruiser, which was obviously worst-case scenario.

"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.

It took only one trip to get all my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the faded blue-and-white checked curtains around the window—these were all a part of my childhood. The only changes Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew. The desk now held a secondhand computer, with the phone line for the modem stapled along the floor to the nearest phone jack. This was one of my mother's requirements, so that we could stay in touch. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner.

There was only one small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie, but I'd had to share with my mom before, and that was definitely worse. She had a lot more stuff, and she doggedly resisted all my attempts to organize any of it.

One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover. He left me alone to unpack and get settled, which would have been totally impossible for my mom. It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look comfortable; a relief to stare out the window at the sheeting rain and let my thoughts get dark.

Forks High School had just three hundred and fifty-seven—now fifty-eight—students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together—their grandparents had been toddlers together. I would be the new kid from the big city, something to stare at and whisper about.

Maybe if I had been one of the cool kids, I could make this work for me. Come in all popular, homecoming king–style. But there was no hiding the fact that I was not that guy—not the football star, not the class president, not the bad boy on the motorcycle. I was the kid who looked like he should be good at basketball, until I started walking. The kid who got shoved into lockers until I'd suddenly shot up eight inches sophomore year. The kid who was too quiet and too pale, who didn't know anything about gaming or cars or baseball statistics or anything else I was supposed to be into.

Unlike the other guys, I didn't have a ton of free time for hobbies. I had a checkbook to balance, a clogged drain to snake, and a week's groceries to shop for.

Or I used to.

So I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closest to of anyone on the planet, never really understood me. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Like, maybe what I saw as green was what everyone else saw as red. Maybe I smelled vinegar when they smelled coconut. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.

But the cause didn't matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow would be just the beginning.

I didn't sleep well that night, even after I finally got my head to shut up. The constant whooshing of the rain and wind across the roof wouldn't fade into the background. I pulled the old quilt over my head, and later added the pillow, too. But I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight, when the rain finally settled into a quiet drizzle.

Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like that prison cage I'd imagined.

Breakfast with Charlie was quiet. He wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was a waste of time. Good luck tended to avoid me. Charlie left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family. After he left, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three unmatching chairs and stared at the familiar kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor. Nothing had changed. My mom had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago, trying to bring some sunshine into the house. Over the small fireplace in the adjoining, microscopic family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by the procession of my school pictures up to this year's. Those were embarrassing to look at—the bad haircuts, the braces years, the acne that had finally cleared up. I would have to see what I could do to get Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I was living here.

It was impossible, being in this house, not to realize that Charlie had never gotten over my mom. It made me uncomfortable.

I didn't want to be too early to school, but I couldn't stay in the house anymore. I put on my jacket—thick, non-breathing plastic, like a biohazard suit—and headed out into the rain.

It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eave by the door, and locked up. The sloshing of my new waterproof boots sounded weird. I missed the normal crunch of gravel as I walked.

Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Billy or Charlie had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. The engine started quickly, which was a relief, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. Well, a truck this old was bound to have a flaw. The antique radio worked, a bonus I hadn't expected.

Finding the school wasn't difficult, though I'd never been there before. The school was, like most other things, just off the highway. It was not obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be the Forks High School, made me stop. It looked like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon-colored bricks. There were so many trees and shrubs I couldn't see its size at first. Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered nostalgically. Where were the chain-link fences, the metal detectors?

I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading front office. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges. I took a deep breath before opening the door. Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer than I'd hoped. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. Plants grew everywhere in large plastic pots, as if there wasn't enough greenery outside. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly colored flyers taped to its front. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a large, red-haired woman wearing glasses. She was wearing a purple t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed.

The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Beaufort Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Son of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.

"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school." She brought several sheets to the counter to show me.

She went through my classes for me, highlighting the best route to each on the map, and gave me a slip to have each teacher sign, which I was to bring back at the end of the day. She smiled at me and hoped, like Charlie, that I would like it here in Forks. I smiled back as convincingly as I could.

When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I'd lived in one of the few lower-income neighborhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.

I looked at the map in the truck, trying to memorize it now; hopefully I wouldn't have to walk around with it stuck in front of my nose all day. I stuffed everything in my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and sucked in a huge breath. I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck.

I kept my face pulled back into my hood as I walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers. My plain black jacket didn't stand out, I noticed with relief.

Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black "3" was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats through the door.

The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here.

I took the slip up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had a nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason. He gawked at me when he saw my name - not an encouraging response - and of course I flushed tomato red. But at least he sent me to an empty desk at the back without introducing me to the class. It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in the back, but somehow, they managed. I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything. That was comforting... and boring. I wondered if my mom would send me my folder of old essays, or if she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments with her in my head while the teacher droned on.

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Beaufort Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

"Beau," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

"Where's your next class?" he asked.

I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."

There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way..." Definitely over-helpful. "I'm Eric," he added.

I smiled tentatively. "Thanks."

We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid.

"So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked.

"Very."

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.

"Sunny," I told him.

"You don't look very tan."

"My mother is part albino."

He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm.

We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked.

"Well, good luck," he said as I touched the handle. "Maybe we'll have some other classes together." He sounded hopeful.

I smiled at him vaguely and went inside.

The rest of the morning passed in about the same fashion. My Trigonometry teacher, Mrs. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject she taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own boots on the way to my seat.

After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map.

One boy sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and he walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. He was way shorter than me, but his wildly curly dark hair made up some of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember his name, so I smiled and nodded as he prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of his friends, who he introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as he spoke them. They seemed impressed by his bravery in speaking to me. The boy from English, Eric, waved at me from across the room.

It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.

They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.

They didn't look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big - muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixie-like, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruise-like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.

But all this is not why I couldn't look away.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful - maybe the perfect blonde girl, or the bronze-haired boy.

They were all looking away - away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray - unopened soda, unbitten apple - and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer's step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible. My eyes darted back to the others, who sat unchanging.

"Who are they?" I asked the guy from my Spanish class, whose name I'd forgotten.

As he looked up to see who I meant—though he could probably guess from my tone—suddenly he looked at us, the perfect one, the youngest, maybe. He looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.

He looked away quickly, faster than I could, though I dropped my stare as soon as he'd glanced our way. I could feel the patches of red start to bloom in my face. In that brief flash of a glance, his face wasn't interested at all—it was like someone had called his name, and he'd looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.

My neighbor laughed once, uncomfortable, looking down at the table like I did.

He muttered his answer under his breath. "Those are the Cullens and the Hales. Edward and Emmett Cullen, Jasper and Rosalie Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen. They live with Dr. Cullen and his wife."

I glanced sideways at the bronze-haired boy, who was looking at his tray now, picking a bagel to pieces with long, pale fingers. His mouth was moving very quickly, his lips barely opening. The other three looked away, but I still thought he might be speaking quietly to them.

Weird names. Old-fashioned. The kinds of names grandparents had—like my name. Maybe that was the thing here? Small-town names? And then I finally remembered that my neighbor was named Jeremy. A totally normal name. There were two kids named Jeremy in my history class back home.

"They're all very…good-looking." What an understatement.

"Yeah!" Jeremy agreed with another laugh. "They're all together, though—Rosalie and Emmett, Alice and Jasper. Like dating, you know? And they live together." He snickered and wagged his eyebrows suggestively.

I didn't know why, but his reaction made me want to defend them. Maybe just because he sounded so judgmental. But what could I say? I didn't know anything about them.

"Which ones are the Cullens?" I asked, wanting to change the tone but not the subject. "They don't look related…well, I mean, sort of…"

"Oh, they're not. Dr. Cullen is really young. Early thirties. The Cullen kids are all adopted. The Hales—the blondes—are brother and sister, twins, I think, and they're some kind of foster kids."

"They look old for foster kids."

"They are now. Rosalie and Jasper are both eighteen, but they've been with Mrs. Cullen since they were little. She's their aunt, I think."

"That's actually kind of amazing—for them to take care of all those kids, when they're so young and everything."

"I guess so," Jeremy said, though it sounded like he'd rather not say anything positive. As if he didn't like the doctor and his wife for some reason…and the way he was looking at their adopted kids, I could guess there might be some jealousy involved. "I think Mrs. Cullen can't have any kids, though," he added, as if that somehow made what they were doing less admirable.

Through all this conversation, I couldn't keep my eyes away from the strange family for more than a few seconds at a time. They continued to look at the walls and not eat.

"Have they always lived in Forks?" I asked. How could I never have noticed them during my summers here?

"No. They just moved down two years ago from somewhere in Alaska."

I felt a strange wave of pity, and relief. Pity because, as beautiful as they were, they were still outsiders, not accepted. Relief that I wasn't the only newcomer here, and definitely not the most interesting by any standard.

As I examined them again, the younger boy, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with obvious curiosity. As I immediately looked away, I thought that his look held some kind of unanswered expectation.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I tried to glance casually in that direction, like I was just checking out the cafeteria; he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other kids had today—he had this frustrated expression I didn't understand. I looked down again.

"That's Edward." He shrugged, and the blonde girl across the table leaned in to join the conversation.

"He's hot, but he doesn't go out with anyone. Apparently none of the girls here are good enough for him," she said sourly, then flipped her hair over her shoulder. I wondered how many times he'd turned her down.

I pressed my lips together to hide a smile. Then I glanced at him again. Edward. His face was turned away, but I thought from the shape of his cheek that he might be smiling, too.

After a few more minutes, the four of them left the table together. They all were noticeably graceful - even the big, brawny one. It was unsettling to watch. The one named Edward didn't look at me again.

I sat at the table with Jeremy and his friends longer than I would have if I'd been sitting alone. I was anxious not to be late for class on my first day. One of my new acquaintances, who considerately reminded me that her name was Angela, had Biology II with me the next hour. We walked to class together in silence. She was shy, too.

When we entered the classroom, Angela went to sit at a black-topped lab table exactly like the ones I was used to. She already had a neighbor. In fact, all the tables were filled but one. Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.

As I walked down the aisle to introduce myself to the teacher and get my slip signed, I was watching him surreptitiously. Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face - it was hostile, furious. I looked away quickly, shocked, going red again. I stumbled over a book in the walkway and had to catch myself on the edge of a table. The girl sitting there giggled.

I'd noticed that his eyes were black - coal black.

Mr. Banner signed my slip and handed me a book with no nonsense about introductions. I could tell we were going to get along. Of course, he had no choice but to send me to the one open seat in the middle of the room. I kept my eyes down as I went to sit by him, bewildered by the antagonistic stare he'd given me.

I didn't look up as I set my book on the table and took my seat, but I saw his posture change from the corner of my eye. He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad. Inconspicuously, I sniffed my shirt. It smelled like laundry detergent. It seemed an innocent enough odor.

I rested my chin in my hand and ignored him and tried to pay attention to the teacher.

Unfortunately the lecture was on cellular anatomy, something I'd already studied. I took notes carefully anyway, always looking down.

I couldn't stop myself from glancing occasionally at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never relaxed his stiff position on the edge of his chair, sitting as far from me as possible. I could see his hand on his left leg was clenched into a fist, tendons standing out under his pale skin. This, too, he never relaxed. He had the long sleeves of his white shirt pushed up to his elbows, and his forearm was surprisingly hard and muscular beneath his light skin. He wasn't nearly as slight as he'd looked next to his burly brother.

The class seemed to drag on longer than the others. Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like he wasn't breathing. What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behavior? I questioned my judgment on the girl's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.

It couldn't have anything to do with me. He didn't know me from Adam.

I peeked over at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind.

At that moment, the bell rang loudly, making me jump, and Edward Cullen was out of his seat. Fluidly he rose - he was much taller than I'd thought - his back to me, and he was out the door before anyone else was out of their seat.

I sat frozen in my seat, staring blankly after him. He was so mean. It wasn't fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger that filled me.

"Aren't you Beaufort Swan?" a female voice asked.

I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced girl, her pale blond hair carefully straightened around her face, smiling at me in a friendly way. She obviously didn't think I smelled bad.

"Beau," I corrected her, with a smile.

"I'm Makayla."

"Hi, Makayla."

"Do you need any help finding your next class?"

"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."

"That's my next class, too." She seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.

We walked to class together; she was a chatterer - she supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. She'd lived in California till he was ten, so she knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out she was in my English class also. She was the nicest person I'd met today.

But as we were entering the gym, she asked, "So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that."

I cringed. So I wasn't the only one who had noticed. And, apparently, that wasn't Edward Cullen's usual behavior. I decided to play dumb.

"Was that the guy I sat next to in Biology?" I asked artlessly.

"Yes," she said. "He looked like he was in pain or something."

"I don't know," I responded. "I never spoke to him."

"He's a weird guy." Makayla lingered by me instead of heading to the dressing room. "I mean, if I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you."

I smiled at her before walking through the boys' locker room door. She was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my irritation.

The Gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform but didn't make me dress down for today's class. At home, only two years of P.E. were required. Here, P.E. was mandatory all four years. Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth.

I watched four volleyball games running simultaneously. Remembering how many injuries I had sustained - and inflicted - playing volleyball, I felt faintly nauseated.

The final bell rang at last. I walked slowly to the office to return my paperwork. The rain had drifted away, but the wind was strong, and colder. I wrapped my arms around myself.

When I walked into the warm office, I almost turned around and walked back out.

Edward Cullen stood at the desk in front of me. I recognized again that tousled bronze hair. He didn't appear to notice the sound of my entrance. I stood pressed against the back wall, waiting for the receptionist to be free.

He was arguing with her in a low, attractive voice. I quickly picked up the gist of the argument. He was trying to trade from sixth-hour Biology to another time - any other time. I just couldn't believe that this was about me. It had to be something else, something that happened before I entered the Biology room. The look on his face must have been about another aggravation entirely. It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.

The door opened again, and the cold wind suddenly gusted through the room, rustling the papers on the desk and tousling my hair. The girl who came in merely stepped to the desk, placed a note in the wire basket, and walked out again. But Edward Cullen's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at me - his face was absurdly handsome - with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled me more than the freezing wind. He turned back to the receptionist.

"Never mind, then," he said hastily in a voice like velvet. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." And he turned on his heel without another look at me, and disappeared out the door.

I went meekly to the desk, my face white for once instead of red, and handed her the signed slip.

"How did your first day go, dear?" the receptionist asked maternally.

"Fine," I lied, my voice weak. She didn't look convinced.

When I got to the truck, it was almost the last car in the lot. It seemed like a haven, already the closest thing to home I had in this damp green hole. I sat inside for a while, just staring out the windshield blankly. But soon I was cold enough to need the heater, so I turned the key and the engine roared to life. I headed back to Charlie's house, fighting with myself in my head the whole way


	2. first sight Edward Pov

This was the time of day when I wished I were able to sleep.

High school.

Or was purgatory the right word? If there was any way to atone for my sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly monotonous than the last.

I suppose this was my form of sleep - if sleep was defined as the inert state between active periods.

I stared at the cracks running through the plaster in the far corner of the cafeteria, imagining patterns into them that were not there. It was one way to tune out the voices that babbled like the gush of a river inside my head.

Several hundred of these voices I ignored out of boredom.

When it came to the human mind, I'd heard it all before and then some. Today, all thoughts were consumed with the trivial drama of a new addition to the small student body here. It took so little to work them all up. I'd seen the new face repeated in thought after thought from every angle. Just an ordinary human bou. The excitement over his arrival was tiresomely predictable - like flashing a shiny object at a child. Half the sheep-like females were already imagining themselves in love with him, just because he was something new to look at. I tried harder to tune them out.

Only four voices did I block out of courtesy rather than distaste: my family, my two brothers and two sisters, who were so used to the lack of privacy in my presence that they rarely gave it a thought. I gave them what privacy I could. I tried not to listen if I could help it.

Try as I may, still...I knew. Rosalie was thinking, as usual, about herself. She'd caught sight of her profile in the reflection off someone's glasses, and she was mulling over her own perfection. Rosalie's mind was a shallow pool with few surprises.

Emmett was fuming over a wrestling match he'd lost to Jasper during the night. It would take all his limited patience to make it to the end of the school day to orchestrate a rematch. I never really felt intrusive hearing Emmett's thoughts, because he never thought one thing that he would not say aloud or put into action. Perhaps I only felt guilty reading the others' minds because I knew there were things there that they wouldn't want me to know. If Rosalie's mind was a shallow pool, then Emmett's was a lake with no shadows, glass clear.

And Jasper was...suffering. I suppressed a sigh.

Edward. Alice called my name in her head, and had my attention at once.

It was just the same as having my name called aloud. I was glad my given name had fallen out of style lately - it had been annoying; anytime anyone thought of any Edward, my head would turn automatically...

My head didn't turn now. Alice and I were good at these private conversations. It was rare that anyone caught us. I kept my eyes on the lines in the plaster. How is he holding up? she asked me.

I frowned, just a small change in the set of my mouth. Nothing that would tip the others off. I could easily be frowning out of boredom.

Alice's mental tone was alarmed now, and I saw in her mind that she was watching Jasper in her peripheral vision. Is there any danger? She searched ahead, into the immediate future, skimming through visions of monotony for the source behind my frown.

I turned my head slowly to the left, as if looking at the bricks of the wall, sighed, and then to the right, back to the cracks in the ceiling. Only Alice knew I was shaking my head.

She relaxed. Let me know if it gets too bad.

I moved only my eyes, up to the ceiling above, and back down.

Thanks for doing this.

I was glad I couldn't answer her aloud. What would I say? 'My pleasure'? It was hardly that. I didn't enjoy listening to Jasper's struggles. Was it really necessary to experiment like this? Wouldn't the safer path be to just admit that he might never be able to handle the thirst the way the rest of us could, and not push his limits? Why flirt with disaster?

It had been two weeks since our last hunting trip. That was not an immensely difficult time span for the rest of us. A little uncomfortable occasionally - if a human walked too close, if the wind blew the wrong way. But humans rarely walked too close. Their instincts told them what their conscious minds would never understand: we were dangerous.

Jasper was very dangerous right now.

At that moment, a small girl paused at the end of the closest table to ours,stopping to talk to a friend. She tossed her short, sandy hair, running her fingers throughit. The heaters blew her scent in our direction. I was used to the way that scent made mefeel - the dry ache in my throat, the hollow yearn in my stomach, the automatictightening of my muscles, the excess flow of venom in my mouth...

This was all quite normal, usually easy to ignore. It was harder just now, with thefeelings stronger, doubled, as I monitored Jasper's reaction. Twin thirsts, rather than justmine.

Jasper was letting his imagination get away from him. He was picturing it - picturing himself getting up from his seat next to Alice and going to stand beside the littlegirl. Thinking of leaning down and in, as if he were going to whisper in her ear, andletting his lips touch the arch of her throat. Imagining how the hot flow of her pulsebeneath the fine skin would feel under his mouth...

I kicked his chair.

He met my gaze for a minute, and then looked down. I could hear shame andrebellion war in his head.

"Sorry," Jasper muttered.

I shrugged.

"You weren't going to do anything," Alice murmured to him, soothing hischagrin. "I could see that."

I fought back the grimace that would give her lie away. We had to stick together,Alice and I. It wasn't easy, hearing voices or seeing visions of the future. Both freaksamong those who were already freaks. We protected each other's secrets.

"It helps a little if you think of them as people," Alice suggested, her high,musical voice too fast for human ears to understand, if any had been close enough tohear. "Her name is Whitney. She has a baby sister she adores. Her mother invited Esmeto that garden party, do you remember?"

"I know who she is," Jasper said curtly. He turned away to stare out one of thesmall windows that were spaced just under the eaves around the long room. His toneended the conversation.

He would have to hunt tonight. It was ridiculous to take risks like this, trying totest his strength, to build his endurance. Jasper should just accept his limitations andwork within them. His former habits were not conducive to our chosen lifestyle; heshouldn't push himself in this way.

Alice sighed silently and stood, taking her tray of food - her prop, as it were - with her and leaving him alone. She knew when he'd had enough of her encouragement.Though Rosalie and Emmett were more flagrant about their relationship, it was Alice andJasper who knew each other's every mood as well as their own. As if they could readminds, too - only just each other's.

Edward Cullen.

Reflex reaction. I turned to the sound of my name being called, though it wasn't being called, just thought.

My eyes locked for a small portion of a second with a pair of wide, chocolate brown human eyes set in a pale, heart-shaped face. I knew the face, though I'd never seen it myself before this moment. It had been foremost in every human head today. The new student, Beaufort Swan. Son of the town's chief of police, brought to live hereby some new custody situation. Beau. He'd corrected everyone who'd used his fullname...

I looked away, bored. It took me a second to realize that he had not been the one to think my name.

Of course he's already crushing on the Cullens, I heard the first thought continue.

Now I recognized the voice.' Jeremy Stanley - it had been a while since he'd bothered me with his anger about Makayla likeing me. What a relief it had been when Makayla'd gotten over her misplaced infatuation. It used to be nearly impossible to escape her constant,ridiculous daydreams. I'd wished, at the time, that I could explain to her exactly what would have happened if my lips, and the teeth behind them, had gotten anywhere near her. That would have silenced those annoying fantasies. The thought of her reaction almost made me smile.

Fat lot of good it will do him, Jeremy went on. He's really not even good looking. I don't know why Eric is staring so much...or Makayla.

He winced mentally on the last name. His infatuation, the genericallypopular Makayla Newton, was completely oblivious to him. Apparently, she was not asoblivious to the new boy. Like the child with the shiny object again. This put a meanedge to Jeremy's thoughts, though he was outwardly cordial to the newcomer as he explained to him the commonly held knowledge about my family. The new student must have asked about us.

Everyone's looking at me today, too, Jeremy thought smugly in an aside. Isn't it lucky Beau had two classes with me...I'll bet Makayla will want to ask me what he's - I tried to block the inane chatter out of my head before the petty and the trivial could drive me mad.

"Jeremy Stanley is giving the new Swan boy all the dirty laundry on the Cullen clan," I murmured to Emmett as a distraction.

He chuckled under his breath. I hope he's making it good, he thought.

"Rather unimaginative, actually. Just the barest hint of scandal. Not an ounce of horror. I'm a little disappointed."

And the new boy? Is he disappointed in the gossip as well?

I listened to hear what this new boy, Beau, thought of Jeremy's story. What did he see when he looked at the strange, chalky-skinned family that was universally avoided?

It was sort of my responsibility to know his reaction. I acted as a lookout, for lack of a better word, for my family. To protect us. If anyone ever grew suspicious, I could give us early warning and an easy retreat. It happened occasionally - some human with an active imagination would see in us the characters of a book or a movie. Usually they got it wrong, but it was better to move on somewhere new than to risk scrutiny.

Very, very rarely, someone would guess right. We didn't give them a chance to test their hypothesis. We simply disappeared, to become no more than a frightening memory...I heard nothing, though I listened close beside where Jeremy's frivolous internal monologue continued to gush. It was as if there was no one sitting beside him. How peculiar, had the boy moved? That didn't seem likely, as Jeremy was still babbling to him.I looked up to check, feeling off-balance. Checking on what my extra hearing' could tell me - it wasn't something I ever had to do.

Again, my gaze locked on those same wide brown eyes. He was sitting right where he had been before, and looking at us, a natural thing to be doing, I supposed, as Jeremy was still regaling him with the local gossip about the Cullens.Thinking about us, too, would be natural.

But I couldn't hear a whisper.

Inviting warm red stained his cheeks as he looked down, away from the embarrassing gaffe of getting caught staring at a stranger. It was good that Jasper wasstill gazing out the window. I didn't like to imagine what that easy pooling of blood would do to his control.

The emotions had been as clear on his face as if they were spelled out in words across his forehead: surprise, as he unknowingly absorbed the signs of the subtle differences between his kind and mine, curiosity, as he listened to Jeremy's tale, and something more...fascination? It wouldn't be the first time. We were beautiful to them,our intended prey. Then, finally, embarrassment as I caught him staring at me.

And yet, though his thoughts had been so clear in his odd eyes - odd, because ofthe depth to them; brown eyes often seemed flat in their darkness - I could hear nothing but silence from the place he was sitting. Nothing at all.

I felt a moment of unease.

This was nothing I'd ever encountered before. Was there something wrong with me? I felt exactly the same as I always did. Worried, I listened harder.All the voices I'd been blocking were suddenly shouting in my head...wonder what music he likes...maybe I could mention that new CD... Makayla Newton was thinking, two tables away - fixated on Beau Swan.

Look at him staring at him. Isn't it enough that he has half the girls in school waiting for him to... Eric Yorkie was thinking sulfurous thoughts, also revolving around the boy.

...so disgusting. You'd think he was famous or something... Even Edward Cullen, staring... Lawrence Mallory was so jealous that his face, by all rights, should be dark jade in color. And Jeremy, flaunting his new best friend. What a joke... Vitriol continued to spew from the boy's thoughts.

...I bet everyone has asked him that. But I'd like to talk to him. I'll think of a more original question... Ashley Dowling mused.

...maybe he'll be in my Spanish... June Richardson hoped.

...tons left to do tonight! Trig, and the English test. I hope my mom... Angela Weber, a quiet girl, whose thoughts were unusually kind, was the only one at the table who wasn't obsessed with this Beau.

I could hear them all, hear every insignificant thing they were thinking as it passed through their minds. But nothing at all from the new student with the deceptively communicative eyes.

And, of course, I could hear what the boy said when he spoke to Jeremy. I didn't have to read minds to be able to hear his low, clear voice on the far side of the long room. "Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I heard him ask, sneaking a look at me from the corner of his eye, only to look quickly away when he saw that I was still staring.

If I'd had time to hope that hearing the sound of his voice would help me pinpoint the tone of his thoughts, lost somewhere where I couldn't access them, I was instantly disappointed. Usually, people's thoughts came to them in a similar pitch as their physical voices. But this quiet, shy voice was unfamiliar, not one of the hundreds of thoughts bouncing around the room, I was sure of that. Entirely new.

Oh, You're a faggot! Jeremy thought before answering the boy's question. "That's Edward. Then Makayla leaned into the conversation. He's gorgeous, of course, but a complete waste of time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed. I turned my head away to hide my smile. Makayla and her classmates had no idea how lucky they were that none of them particularly appealed to me.

Beneath the transient humor, I felt a strange impulse, one I did not clearly understand. It had something to do with the vicious edge to Jeremy's thoughts that the new boy was unaware of... I felt the strangest urge to step in between them, to shield this Beau Swan from the darker workings of Jeremy's mind. What an odd thing to feel. Trying to ferret out the motivations behind the impulse, I examined the new boy one more time.

Perhaps it was just some long buried protective instinct - the strong for the weak. This boy looked more fragile than his new classmates. His skin was so translucent it was hard to believe it offered him much defense from the outside world. I could see the rhythmic pulse of blood through his veins under the clear, pale membrane... But I should not concentrate on that. I was good at this life I'd chosen, but I was just as thirsty as Jasper and there was no point in inviting temptation.

There was a faint crease between his eyebrows that he seemed unaware of. It was unbelievable frustrating! I could clearly see that it was a strain for him to sit there, to make conversation with strangers, to be the center of attention. I could sense his shyness from the way he held his frail-looking shoulders, slightly hunched, as if he was expecting a rebuff at any moment. And yet I could only sense, could only see, could only imagine. There was nothing but silence from the very unexceptional human boy. I could hear nothing. Why?

"Shall we?" Rosalie murmured, interrupting my focus.

I looked away from the Boy with a sense of relief. I didn't want to continue to fail at this - it irritated me. And I didn't want to develop any interest in his hidden thoughts simply because they were hidden from me. No doubt, when I did decipher his thoughts - and I would find a way to do so - they would be just as petty and trivial as any human's thoughts. Not worth the effort I would expend to reach them.

"So, is the new one afraid of us yet?" Emmett asked, still waiting for my response to his question before.

I shrugged. He wasn't interested enough to press for a more information. Nor should I be interested.

We got up from the table and walked out of the cafeteria.

Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper were pretending to be seniors; they left for their classes. I was playing a younger role than they. I headed off for my junior level biology class, preparing my mind for the tedium. It was doubtful Mr. Banner, a man of no more than average intellect, would manage to pull out anything in his lecture that would surprise someone holding two graduate degrees in medicine.

In the classroom, I settled into my chair and let my books - props, again; they held nothing I didn't already know - spill across the table. I was the only student who had a table to himself. The humans weren't smart enough to know that they feared me, but their survival instincts were enough to keep them away.

The room slowly filled as they trickled in from lunch. I leaned back in my chair and waited for the time to pass. Again, I wished I was able to sleep. Because I'd been thinking about him, when Angela Weber escorted the new boy through the door, his name intruded on my attention.

Beau seems just as shy as me. I'll bet today is really hard for him. I wish I could say something...but it would probably just sound stupid...

Yes! Makayla Newton thought, turning in her seat to watch the boy and Angela enter.

Still, from the place where Beau Swan stood, nothing. The empty space where his thoughts should be irritated and unnerved me.

He came closer, walking down the aisle beside me to get to the teacher's desk.

Poor boy; the seat next to me was the only one available. Automatically, I cleared what would be his side of the desk, shoving my books into a pile. I doubted he would feel very comfortable there. He was in for a long semester - in this class, at least. Perhaps, though, sitting beside him, I'd be able to flush out his secrets...not that I'd ever needed close proximity before...not that I would find anything worth listening to...

Beau Swan walked into the flow of the heated air that blew toward me from the vent.

His scent hit me like wrecking ball, like a battering ram. There was no image violent enough to encapsulate the force of what happened to me in that moment. In that instant, I was nothing close to the human I'd once been; no trace of the shreds of humanity I'd managed to cloak myself in remained.

I was a predator. He was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.

There was no room full of witnesses - they were already collateral damage in my head. The mystery of his thoughts was forgotten. His thoughts meant nothing, for he would not go on thinking them much longer.

I was a vampire, and he had the sweetest blood I'd smelled in eighty years. I hadn't imagined such a scent could exist. If I'd known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have combed the planet for him. I could imagine the taste...

Thirst burned through my throat like fire. My mouth was baked and desiccated. The fresh flow of venom did nothing to dispel that sensation. My stomach twisted with the hunger that was an echo of the thirst. My muscles coiled to spring.

Not a full second had passed. He was still taking the same step that had put him downwind from me.

As his foot touched the ground, his eyes slid toward me, a movement he clearly meant to be stealthy. His glance met mine, and I saw myself reflected in the wide mirror of his eyes.

The shock of the face I saw there saved his life for a few thorny moments.

He didn't make it easier. When he processed the expression on my face, blood flooded his cheeks again, turning his skin the most delicious color I'd ever seen. The scent was a thick haze in my brain. I could barely think through it. My thoughts raged, resisting control, incoherent.

He walked more quickly now, as if he understood the need to escape. His haste made him clumsy - he tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

I tried to focus on the face I'd seen in his eyes, a face I recognized with revulsion. The face of the monster in me - the face I'd beaten back with decades of effort and uncompromising discipline. How easily it sprang to the surface now!

The scent swirled around me again, scattering my thoughts and nearly propelling me out of my seat.

My hand gripped under the edge of the table as I tried to hold myself in my chair.

The wood was not up to the task. My hand crushed through the strut and came away with a palmful of splintered pulp, leaving the shape of my fingers carved into the remaining wood.

Destroy evidence. That was a fundamental rule. I quickly pulverized the edges of the shape with my fingertips, leaving nothing but a ragged hole and a pile of shavings on the floor, which I scattered with my foot.

Destroy evidence. Collateral damage...

I knew what had to happen now. The boy would have to come sit beside me, and I would have to kill him.

The innocent bystanders in this classroom, eighteen other children and one man, could not be allowed to leave this room, having seen what they would soon see.

I flinched at the thought of what I must do. Even at my very worst, I had never committed this kind of atrocity. I had never killed innocents, not in over eight decades.

And now I planned to slaughter twenty of them at once.

The face of the monster in the mirror mocked me.

Even as part of me shuddered away from the monster, another part was planning it.

If I killed the boy first, I would have only fifteen or twenty seconds with him before the humans in the room would react. Maybe a little bit longer, if at first they did not realize what I was doing. He would not have time to scream or feel pain; I would not kill him cruelly. That much I could give this stranger with his horribly desirable blood.

But then I would have to stop them from escaping. I wouldn't have to worry about the windows, too high up and small to provide an escape for anyone. Just the door - block that and they were trapped.

It would be slower and more difficult, trying to take them all down when they were panicked and scrambling, moving in chaos. Not impossible, but there would be much more noise. Time for lots of screaming. Someone would hear...and I'd be forced to kill even more innocents in this black hour.

And his blood would cool, while I murdered the others.

The scent punished me, closing my throat with dry aching...

So the witnesses first then.

I mapped it out in my head. I was in the middle of the room, the furthest row in the back. I would take my right side first. I could snap four or five of their necks per second, I estimated. It would not be noisy. The right side would be the lucky side; they would not see me coming. Moving around the front and back up the left side, it would take me, at most, five seconds to end every life in this room.

Long enough for Beau Swan to see, briefly, what was coming for him. Long enough for him to feel fear. Long enough, maybe, if shock didn't freeze him in place, for him to work up a scream. One soft scream that would not bring anyone running.

I took a deep breath, and the scent was a fire that raced through my dry veins, burning out from my chest to consume every better impulse that I was capable of. He was just turning now. In a few seconds, he would sit down inches away from me.

The monster in my head smiled in anticipation.

Someone slammed shut a folder on my left. I didn't look up to see which of the doomed humans it was. But the motion sent a wave of ordinary, unscented air wafting across my face.

For one short second, I was able to think clearly. In that precious second, I saw two faces in my head, side by side.

One was mine, or rather had been: the red-eyed monster that had killed so many people that I'd stop counting their numbers. Rationalized, justified murders. A killer of killers, a killer of other, less powerful monsters. It was a god complex, I acknowledged that - deciding who deserved a death sentence. It was a compromise with myself. I had fed on human blood, but only by the loosest definition. My victims were, in their various dark pastimes, barely more human than I was.

The other face was Carlisle's.

There was no resemblance between the two faces. They were bright day and blackest night.

There was no reason for there to be a resemblance. Carlisle was not my father in the basic biological sense. We shared no common features. The similarity in our coloring was a product of what we were; every vampire had the same ice pale skin. The similarity in the color of our eyes was another matter - a reflection of a mutual choice.

And yet, though there was no basis for a resemblance, I'd imagined that my face had begun to reflect his, to an extent, in the last seventy-odd years that I had embraced his choice and followed in his steps. My features had not changed, but it seemed to me like some of his wisdom had marked my expression, that a little of his compassion could be traced in the shape of my mouth, and hints of his patience were evident on my brow.

All those tiny improvements were lost in the face of the monster. In a few moments, there would be nothing left in me that would reflect the years I'd spent with my creator, my mentor, my father in all the ways that counted. My eyes would glow red as a devil's; all likeness would be lost forever.

In my head, Carlisle's kind eyes did not judge me. I knew that he would forgive me for this horrible act that I would do. Because he loved me. Because he thought I was better than I was. And he would still love me, even as I now proved him wrong.

Beau Swan sat down in the chair next to me, his movements stiff and awkward - with fear? - and the scent of his blood bloomed in an inexorable cloud around me. I would prove my father wrong about me. The misery of this fact hurt almost as much as the fire in my throat.

I leaned away from him in revulsion - revolted by the monster aching to take him. Why did he have to come here? Why did he have to exist? Why did he have to ruin the little peace I had in this non-life of mine? Why had this aggravating human ever been born? He would ruin me.

I turned my face away from him, as a sudden fierce, unreasoning hatred washed through me.

Who was this creature? Why me, why now? Why did I have to lose everything just because he happened to choose this unlikely town to appear in? Why had he come here!

I didn't want to be the monster! I didn't want to kill this room full of harmless children! I didn't want to lose everything I'd gained in a lifetime of sacrifice and denial! I wouldn't. He couldn't make me.

The scent was the problem, the hideously appealing scent of his blood. If there was only some way to resist...if only another gust of fresh air could clear my head. Beau Swan shook out his short, thick, mahogany hair in my direction.

Was he insane? It was as if he were encouraging the monster! Taunting him. There was no friendly breeze to blow the smell away from me now. All would soon be lost.

No, there was no helpful breeze. But I didn't have to breathe.

I stopped the flow of air through my lungs; the relief was instantaneous, but incomplete. I still had the memory of the scent in my head, the taste of it on the back of my tongue. I wouldn't be able to resist even that for long. But perhaps I could resist for an hour. One hour. Just enough time to get out of this room full of victims, victims that maybe didn't have to be victims. If I could resist for one short hour.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, not breathing. My body did not need oxygen, but it went against my instincts. I relied on scent more than my other senses in times of stress. It led the way in the hunt, it was the first warning in case of danger. I did not often came across something as dangerous as I was, but self-preservation was just as strong in my kind as it was in the average human.

Uncomfortable, but manageable. More bearable than smelling him and not sinking my teeth through that fine, thin, see-through skin to the hot, wet, pulsing - An hour! Just one hour. I must not think of the scent, the taste.

The silent boy kept hand between us, leaning forward so that his hand spilled across his folder. I couldn't see his face, to try to read the emotions in his clear, deep eyes. Was this why he'd let his hand out between us? To hide those eyes from me? Out of fear? Shyness? To keep his secrets from me?

My former irritation at being stymied by his soundless thoughts was weak and pale in comparison to the need - and the hate - that possessed me now. For I hated this frail man-child beside me, hated him with all the fervor with which I clung to my former self, my love of my family, my dreams of being something better than what I was... Hating him, hating how he made me feel - it helped a little. Yes, the irritation I'd felt before was weak, but it, too, helped a little. I clung to any emotion that distracted me from imagining what he would taste like...

Hate and irritation. Impatience. Would the hour never pass?

And when the hour ended... Then he would walk out of this room. And I would do what?

I could introduce myself. Hello, my name is Edward Cullen. May I walk you to your next class?

He would say yes. It would be the polite thing to do. Even already fearing me, as I suspected he did, he would follow convention and walk beside me. It should be easy enough to lead him in the wrong direction. A spur of the forest reached out like a finger to touch the back corner of the parking lot. I could tell him I'd forgotten a book in my car...

Would anyone notice that I was the last person he'd been seen with? It was raining, as usual; two dark raincoats heading the wrong direction wouldn't pique too much interest, or give me away.

Except that I was not the only student who was aware of him today - though no one was as blisteringly aware as I was. Makayla Newton, in particular, was conscious of every shift in his weight as he fidgeted in his chair - he was uncomfortable so close to me, just as anyone would be, just as I'd expected before his scent had destroyed all charitable concern. Makayla Newton would notice if he left the classroom with me.

If I could last an hour, could I last two?

I flinched at the pain of the burning.

He would go home to an empty house. Police Chief Swan worked a full day. I knew his house, as I knew every house in the tiny town. His home was nestled right up against thick woods, with no close neighbors. Even if he had time to scream, which he would not, there would be no one to hear.

That would be the responsible way to deal with this. I'd gone seven decades without human blood. If I held my breath, I could last two hours. And when I had him alone, there would be no chance of anyone else getting hurt. And no reason to rush through the experience, the monster in my head agreed.

It was sophistry to think that by saving the nineteen humans in this room with effort and patience, I would be less a monster when I killed this innocent boy. Though I hated him, I knew my hatred was unjust. I knew that what I really hated was myself. And I would hate us both so much more when he was dead.

I made it through the hour in this way - imagining the best ways to kill him. I tried to avoid imagining the actual act. That might be too much for me; I might lose this battle and end up killing everyone in sight. So I planned strategy, and nothing more. It carried me through the hour.

Once, toward the very end, he peeked up at me through the fluid wall of his hand. I could feel the unjustified hatred burning out of me as I met his gaze - see the reflection of it in his frightened eyes. Blood painted his cheek before he could hide in his hand again, and I was nearly undone.

But the bell rang. Saved by the bell - how clich. We were both saved. He, saved from death. I, saved for just a short time from being the nightmarish creature I feared and loathed.

I couldn't walk as slowly as I should as I darted from the room. If anyone had been looking at me, they might have suspected that there was something not right about the way I moved. No one was paying attention to me. All human thoughts still swirled around the boy who was condemned to die in little more than an hour's time.

I hid in my car.

I didn't like to think of myself having to hide. How cowardly that sounded. But it was unquestionably the case now.

I didn't have enough discipline left to be around humans now. Focusing so much of my efforts on not killing one of them left me no resources to resist the others. What a waste that would be. If I were to give in to the monster, I might as well make it worth the defeat.

I played a CD of music that usually calmed me, but it did little for me now. No, what helped most now was the cool, wet, clean air that drifted with the light rain through my open windows. Though I could remember the scent of Beau Swan's blood with perfect clarity, inhaling the clean air was like washing out the inside of my body from its infection.

I was sane again. I could think again. And I could fight again. I could fight against what I didn't want to be.

I didn't have to go to his home. I didn't have to kill him. Obviously, I was a rational, thinking creature, and I had a choice. There was always a choice.

It hadn't felt that way in the classroom...but I was away from him now. Perhaps, if I avoided him very, very carefully, there was no need for my life to change. I had things ordered the way I liked them now. Why should I let some aggravating and delicious nobody ruin that?

I didn't have to disappoint my father. I didn't have to cause my mother stress, worry...pain. Yes, it would hurt my adopted mother, too. And Esme was so gentle, so tender and soft. Causing someone like Esme pain was truly inexcusable.

How ironic that I'd wanted to protect this human boy from the paltry, toothless threat of Jeremy Stanley's snide thoughts. I was the last person who would ever stand as a protector for Beaufort Swan. He would never need protection from anything more than he needed it from me.

Where was Alice, I suddenly wondered? Hadn't she seen me killing the Swan Boy in a multitude of ways? Why hadn't she come to help - to stop me or help me clean up the evidence, whichever? Was she so absorbed with watching for trouble with Jasper that she'd missed this much more horrific possibility? Was I stronger than I thought? Would I really not have done anything to the boy?

No. I knew that wasn't true. Alice must be concentrating on Jasper very hard.

I searched in the direction I knew she would be, in the small building used for English classes. It did not take me long to locate her familiar voice.' And I was right. Her every thought was turned to Jasper, watching his small choices with minute scrutiny.

I wished I could ask her advice, but at the same time, I was glad she didn't know what I was capable of. That she was unaware of the massacre I had considered in the last hour.

I felt a new burn through my body - the burn of shame. I didn't want any of them to know.

If I could avoid Beau Swan, if I could manage not to kill him - even as I thought that, the monster writhed and gnashed his teeth in frustration - then no one would have to know. If I could keep away from his scent...

There was no reason why I shouldn't try, at least. Make a good choice. Try to be what Carlisle thought I was.

The last hour of school was almost over. I decided to put my new plan into action at once. Better than sitting here in the parking lot where he might pass me and ruin my attempt. Again, I felt the unjust hatred for the boy. I hated that he had this unconscious power over me. That he could make me be something I reviled.

I walked swiftly - a little too swiftly, but there were no witnesses - across the tiny campus to the office. There was no reason for Beau Swan to cross paths with me. He would be avoided like the plague he was.

The office was empty except for the secretary, the one I wanted to see.

She didn't notice my silent entrance.

"Mrs. Cope?"

The woman with the unnaturally red hair looked up and her eyes widened. It always caught them off guard, the little markers they didn't understand, no matter how many times they'd seen one of us before.

"Oh," she gasped, a little flustered. She smoothed her shirt. Silly, she thought to herself. He's almost young enough to be my son. Too young to think of that way... "Hello, Edward. What can I do for you?" Her eyelashes fluttered behind her thick glasses.

Uncomfortable. But I knew how to be charming when I wanted to be. It was easy, since I was able to know instantly how any tone or gesture was taken.

I leaned forward, meeting her gaze as if I were staring deeply into her depthless, small brown eyes. Her thoughts were already in a flutter. This should be simple. "I was wondering if you could help me with my schedule," I said in the soft voice I reserved for not scaring humans.

I heard the tempo of her heart increase.

"Of course, Edward. How can I help?" Too young, too young, she chanted to herself. Wrong, of course. I was older than her grandfather. But according to my driver's license, she was right.

"I was wondering if I could move from my biology class to a senior level science? Physics, perhaps?"

"It there a problem with Mr. Banner, Edward?"

"Not at all, it's just that I've already studied this material..."

"In that accelerated school you all went to in Alaska, right." Her thin lips pursed as she considered this. They should all be in college. I've heard the teachers complain. Perfect four point ohs, never a hesitation with a response, never a wrong answer on a test - like they've found some way to cheat in every subject. Mr. Varner would rather believe that anyone was cheating than think a student was smarter than him... I'll bet their mother tutors them... "Actually, Edward, physics is pretty much full right now. Mr. Banner hates to have more than twenty-five students in a class - "

"I wouldn't be any trouble."

Of course not. Not a perfect Cullen. "I know that, Edward. But there just aren't enough seats as it is..."

"Could I drop the class, then? I could use the period for independent study."

"Drop biology?" Her mouth fell open. That's crazy. How hard is it to sit through a subject you already know? There must be a problem with Mr. Banner. I wonder if I should talk to Bob about it? "You won't have enough credits to graduate."

"I'll catch up next year."

"Maybe you should talk to your parents about that."

The door opened behind me, but who ever it was did not think of me, so I ignored the arrival and concentrated on Mrs. Cope. I leaned slightly closer, and held my eyes a little wider. This would work better if they were gold instead of black. The blackness frightened people, as it should.

"Please, Mrs. Cope?" I made my voice as smooth and compelling as it could be - and it could be considerably compelling. "Isn't there some other section I could switch to? I'm sure there has to be an open slot somewhere? Sixth hour biology can't be the only option..."

I smiled at her, careful not to flash my teeth so widely that it would scare her, letting the expression soften my face.

Her heart drummed faster. Too young, she reminded herself frantically. "Well, maybe I could talk to Bob - I mean Mr. Banner. I could see if - "

A second was all it took to change everything: the atmosphere in the room, my mission here, the reason I leaned toward the red-haired woman... What had been for one purpose before was now for another.

A second was all it took for Samantha Wells to open the door and place a signed tardy slip in the basket by the door, and hurry out again, in a rush to be away from school. A second was all it took for the sudden gust of wind through the open door to crash into me. A second was all it took for me to realize why that first person through the door had not interrupted me with his thoughts.

I turned, though I did not need to make sure. I turned slowly, fighting to control the muscles that rebelled against me.

Beau Swan stood with his back pressed to the wall beside the door, a piece of paper clutched in his hands. His eyes were even wider than usual as he took in my ferocious, inhuman glare.

The smell of his blood saturated every particle of air in the tiny, hot room. My throat burst into flames.

The monster glared back at me from the mirror of his eyes again, a mask of evil. My hand hesitated in the air above the counter. I would not have to look back in order to reach across it and slam Mrs. Cope's head into her desk with enough force to kill her. Two lives, rather than twenty. A trade.

The monster waited anxiously, hungrily, for me to do it.

But there was always a choice - there had to be.

I cut off the motion of my lungs, and fixed Carlisle's face in front of my eyes. I turned back to face Mrs. Cope, and heard her internal surprise at the change in my expression. She shrank away from me, but her fear did not form into coherent words.

Using all the control I'd mastered in my decades of self-denial, I made my voice even and smooth. There was just enough air left in my lungs to speak once more, rushing through the words.

"Nevermind, then. I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help."

I spun and launched myself from the room, trying not to feel the warm-blooded heat of the boy's body as I passed within inches of it.

I didn't stop until I was in my car, moving too fast the entire way there. Most of the humans had cleared out already, so there weren't a lot of witnesses. I heard a sophomore, D.J. Garrett, notice, and then disregard...

Where did Cullen come from - it was like he just came out of thin air... There I go, with the imagination again. Mom always says...

When I slid into my Volvo, the others were already there. I tried to control my breathing, but I was gasping at the fresh air like I'd been suffocated. "Edward?" Alice asked, alarm in her voice.

I just shook my head at her.

"What the hell happened to you?" Emmett demanded, distracted, for the moment, from the fact that Jasper was not in the mood for his rematch.

Instead of answering, I threw the car into reverse. I had to get out of this lot before Beau Swan could follow me here, too. My own personal demon, haunting me... I swung the car around and accelerated. I hit forty before I was on the road. On the road, I hit seventy before I made the corner.

Without looking, I knew that Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper had all turned to stare at Alice. She shrugged. She couldn't see what had passed, only what was coming. She looked ahead for me now. We both processed what she saw in her head, and we were both surprised.

"You're leaving?" she whispered.

The others stared at me now.

"Am I?" I hissed through my teeth.

She saw it then, as my resolve wavered and another choice spun my future in a darker direction.

"Oh."

Beau Swan, dead. My eyes, glowing crimson with fresh blood. The search that would follow. The careful time we would wait before it was safe for us to pull out and start again...

"Oh," she said again. The picture grew more specific. I saw the inside of Chief Swan's house for the first time, saw Beau in a small kitchen with the yellow cupboards, his back to me as I stalked him from the shadows...let the scent pull me toward him...

"Stop!" I groaned, not able to bear more.

"Sorry," she whispered, her eyes wide.

The monster rejoiced.

And the vision in her head shifted again. An empty highway at night, the trees beside it coated in snow, flashing by at almost two hundred miles per hour.

"I'll miss you," she said. "No matter how short a time you're gone."

Emmett and Rosalie exchanged an apprehensive glance.

We were almost to the turn off onto the long drive that led to our home. "Drop us here," Alice instructed. "You should tell Carlisle yourself."

I nodded, and the car squealed to a sudden stop.

Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper got out in silence; they would make Alice explain when I was gone. Alice touched my shoulder.

"You will do the right thing," she murmured. Not a vision this time - an order. "He's Charlie Swan's only family. It would kill him, too."

"Yes," I said, agreeing only with the last part.

She slid out to join the others, her eyebrows pulling together in anxiety. They melted into woods, out of sight before I could turn the car around.

I accelerated back toward town, and I knew the visions in Alice's head would be flashing from dark to bright like a strobe light. As I sped back to Forks doing ninety, I wasn't sure where I was going. To say goodbye to my father? Or to embrace the monster inside me? The road flew away beneath my tires.


	3. open book

The next day was better... and worse.

It was better because it wasn't raining yet, though the clouds were dense and opaque. It was easier because I knew what to expect of my day. Makayla came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Eric glaring at her all the while; that was nattering. People didn't look at me quite as much as they had yesterday. I sat with a big group at lunch that included Makayla, Eric, Jeremy, and several other people whose names and faces I now remembered. I began to feel like I was treading water, instead of drowning in it.

It was worse because I was tired; I still couldn't sleep with the wind echoing around the house. It was worse because Mrs. Varner called on me in Trig when my hand wasn't raised and I had the wrong answer. It was miserable because I had to play volleyball, and the one time I didn't cringe out of the way of the ball, I hit my teammate in the head with it. And it was worse because Edward Cullen wasn't in school at all.

All morning I was dreading lunch, fearing his bizarre glares. Part of me wanted to confront him and demand to know what his problem was. While I was lying sleepless in my bed, I even imagined what I would say. But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator.

But when I walked into the cafeteria with Jeremy - trying to keep my eyes from sweeping the place for him, and failing entirely - I saw that his four siblings of sorts were sitting together at the same table, and he was not with them.

Makayla intercepted us and steered us to her table. Jeremy seemed elated by the attention, and his friends quickly joined us. But as I tried to listen to their easy chatter, I was terribly uncomfortable, waiting nervously for the moment he would arrive. I hoped that he would simply ignore me when he came, and prove my suspicions false.

He didn't come, and as time passed I grew more and more tense.

I walked to Biology with more confidence when, by the end of lunch, he still hadn't showed. Makayla, who was taking on the qualities of a golden retriever, walked faithfully by my side to class. I held my breath at the door, but Edward Cullen wasn't there, either. I exhaled and went to my seat. Makayla followed, talking about an upcoming trip to the beach. She lingered by my desk till the bell rang, then smiled at me wistfully and went to sit by a girl with braces and a bad perm. It looked like I was going to have to do something about Makayla, and it wouldn't be easy. In a town like this, where everyone lived on top of everyone else, diplomacy was essential. I had never been enormously tactful; I had no practice dealing with overly friendly girls.

I was relieved that I had the desk to myself, that Edward was absent. I told myself that repeatedly. But I couldn't get rid of the nagging suspicion that I was the reason he wasn't there. It was ridiculous, and egotistical, to think that I could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible. And yet I couldn't stop worrying that it was true.

When the school day was finally done, and the blush was fading out of my cheeks from the volleyball incident, I changed quickly back into my jeans and navy blue sweater. I hurried from the boys' locker room, pleased to find that I had successfully evaded my retriever friend for the moment. I walked swiftly out to the parking lot. It was crowded now with fleeing students. I got in my truck and dug through my bag to make sure I had what I needed.

Last night I'd discovered that Charlie couldn't cook much besides fried eggs and bacon. So I requested that I be assigned kitchen detail for the duration of my stay. He was willing enough to hand over the keys to the banquet hall. I also found out that he had no food in the house. So I had my shopping list and the cash from the jar in the cupboard labeled FOOD MONEY, and I was on my way to the

I gunned my deafening engine to life, ignoring the heads that turned in my direction, and backed carefully into a place in the line of cars that were waiting to exit the parking lot. As I waited, trying to pretend that the earsplitting rumble was coming from someone else's car, I saw the two Cullens and the Hale twins getting into their car. It was the shiny new Volvo. Of course. I hadn't noticed their clothes before - I'd been too mesmerized by their faces. Now that I looked, it was obvious that they were all dressed exceptionally well; simply, but in clothes that subtly hinted at designer origins. With their remarkable good looks, the style with which they carried themselves, they could have worn dishrags and pulled it off. It seemed excessive for them to have both looks and money. But as far as I could tell, life worked that way most of the time. It didn't look as if it bought them any popularity here.

No, I didn't fully believe that. The isolation must be their desire; I couldn't imagine any door that wouldn't be opened by that degree of beauty.

They looked at my noisy truck as I passed them, just like everyone else. I looked back, unconsciously. The blond boy caught my gaze and his eyes narrowed. I turned my eyes straight forward, punched the gas, and was relieved when I finally was free of the school grounds.

The Thriftway was not far from the school, just a few streets south, off the highway. It was nice to be inside the supermarket; it felt normal. I did the shopping at home, and I fell into the pattern of the familiar task gladly. The store was big enough inside that I couldn't hear the tapping of the rain on the roof to remind me where I was.

When I got home, I unloaded all the groceries, reorganizing the cupboards as I went. I hoped Charlie wouldn't mind. I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them in the oven to bake, covered a steak in marinade and balanced it on top of a carton of eggs in the fridge.

When I was finished with that, I took my book bag upstairs. Before starting my homework, I changed into some comfortable clothes, ruffled my damp hair, and checked my e-mail for the first time. I had three messages.

"Beau," my mom wrote...

Write me as soon as you get in. Tell me how your flight was. Is it raining? I miss you already. I'm almost finished packing for Florida, but I can't find my pink blouse. Do you know where I put it? Phil says hi. Mom.

I sighed and went to the next. It was sent eight hours after the first.

"Beau," she wrote...

Why haven't you e-mailed me yet? What are you waiting for? Mom.

The last was from this morning.

Beaufort Swan,

If I haven't heard from you by 5:30 p.m. today I'm calling Charlie.

I checked the clock. I still had an hour, but my mom was well known for jumping the gun.

Mom,

Calm down. I'm writing right now. Don't do anything rash. Beau.

I sent that, and began again.

Mom,

Everything is great. Of course it's raining. I was waiting for something to write about. School isn't bad, just a little repetitive. I met some nice kids who sit by me at lunch.

Your blouse is at the dry cleaners - you were supposed to pick it up Friday.

Charlie bought me a truck, can you believe it? I love it. It's old, but really sturdy, which is good, you know, for me.

I miss you, too. I'll write again soon, but I'm not going to check my e-mail every five minutes. Relax, breathe. I love you. Beau.

I had decided to read Wuthering Heights - the novel we were currently studying in English - yet again for the fun of it, and that's what I was doing when Charlie came home. I'd lost track of the time, and I hurried downstairs to take the potatoes out and put the steak in to broil.

"Beau?" my father called when he heard me on the stairs.

Who else? I thought to myself.

"Hey, Dad, welcome home."

"Thanks." He hung up his gun belt and stepped out of his boots as I bustled about the kitchen. As far as I was aware, he'd never shot the gun on the job. But he kept it ready. When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose.

"What's for dinner?" he asked warily. My mother was an imaginative cook, and her experiments weren't always edible. I was surprised, and sad, that he seemed to remember that far back.

"Steak and potatoes," I answered, and he looked relieved.

He seemed to feel awkward standing in the kitchen doing nothing; he lumbered into the living room to watch TV while I worked. We were both more comfortable that way. I made a salad while the steaks cooked, and set the table.

I called him in when dinner was ready, and he sniffed appreciatively as he walked into the room.

"Smells good, Beau."

"Thanks."

We ate in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't uncomfortable. Neither of us was bothered by the quiet. In some ways, we were good roommates.

"So, how did you like school? Have you made any friends?" he asked as he was taking seconds.

"Well, I have a few classes with a guy named Jeremy. I sit with his friends at lunch. And there's this girl, Makayla, who's very friendly. Everybody seems pretty nice." With one outstanding exception.

"That must be Makayla Newton. Nice girl - nice family. Her dad owns the sporting goods store just outside of town. He makes a good living off all the backpackers who come through here."

"Do you know the Cullen family?" I asked hesitantly.

"Dr. Cullen's family? Sure. Dr. Cullen's a great man."

"They... the kids... are a little different. They don't seem to fit in very well at school."

Charlie surprised me by looking angry.

"People in this town," he muttered. "Dr. Cullen is a brilliant surgeon who could probably work in any hospital in the world, make ten times the salary he gets here," he continued, getting louder. "We're lucky to have him - lucky that his wife wanted to live in a small town. He's an asset to the community, and all of those kids are well behaved and polite. I had my doubts, when they first moved in, with all those adopted teenagers. I thought we might have some problems with them. But they're all very mature - I haven't had one speck of trouble from any of them. That's more than I can say for the children of some folks who have lived in this town for generations. And they stick together the way a family should - camping trips every other weekend... Just because they're newcomers, people have to talk."

It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Charlie make. He must feel strongly about whatever people were saying.

I backpedaled. "They seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves. They're all very attractive," I added, trying to be more complimentary.

"You should see the doctor," Charlie said, laughing. "It's a good thing he's happily married. A lot of the nurses at the hospital have a hard time concentrating on their work with him around."

We lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. He cleared the table while I started on the dishes. He went back to the TV, and after I finished washing the dishes by hand - no dishwasher - I went upstairs unwillingly to work on my math homework. I could feel a tradition in the making.

That night it was finally quiet. I fell asleep quickly, exhausted.

The rest of the week was uneventful. I got used to the routine of my classes. By Friday I was able to recognize, if not name, almost all the students at school. In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.

Edward Cullen didn't come back to school.

Every day, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens entered the cafeteria without him. Then I could relax and join in the lunchtime conversation. Mostly it centered around a trip to the La Push Ocean Park in two weeks that Makayla was putting together. I was invited, and I had agreed to go, more out of politeness than desire. I believed beaches should be hot and dry.

By Friday I was perfectly comfortable entering my Biology class, no longer worried that Edward would be there. For all I knew, he had dropped out of school. I tried not to think about him, but I couldn't totally suppress the worry that I was responsible for his continued absence, ridiculous as it seemed.

My first weekend in Forks passed without incident. Charlie, unused to spending time in the usually empty house, worked most of the weekend. I cleaned the house, got ahead on my homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful e-mail. I did drive to the library Saturday, but it was so poorly stocked that I didn't bother to get a card; I would have to make a date to visit Olympia or Seattle soon and find a good bookstore. I wondered idly what kind of gas mileage the truck got... and shuddered at the thought.

The rain stayed soft over the weekend, quiet, so I was able to sleep well.

People greeted me in the parking lot Monday morning. I didn't know all their names, but I waved back and smiled at everyone. It was colder this morning, but happily not raining. In English, Makayla took her accustomed seat by my side. We had a pop quiz on Wuthering Heights. It was straightforward, very easy.

All in all, I was feeling a lot more comfortable than I had thought I would feel by this point. More comfortable than I had ever expected to feel here.

When we walked out of class, the air was full of swirling bits of white. I could hear people shouting excitedly to each other. The wind was freezing against my cheeks and nose.

"Wow," Makayla said. "It's snowing."

I looked at the little cotton fluffs that were building up along the sidewalk and swirling erratically past my face.

"Ugh." Snow. There went my good day.

She looked surprised. "Don't you like snow?"

"No. That means it's too cold for rain." Obviously. "Besides, I thought it was supposed to come down in flakes - you know, each one unique and all that. These just look like the ends of Q-tips."

"Haven't you ever seen snow fall before?" she asked incredulously.

"Sure I have." I paused. "On TV."

Makayla laughed. And then a big, squishy ball of dripping snow smacked into the back of her head. We both turned to see where it came from. I had my suspicions about Eric, who was walking away, his back toward us - in the wrong direction for his next class. Makayla apparently had the same notion. She bent over and began scraping together a pile of the white mush.

"I'll see you at lunch, okay?" I kept walking as I spoke. "Once people start throwing wet stuff, I go inside."

She just nodded, her eyes on Eric's retreating figure.

Throughout the morning, everyone chattered excitedly about the snow; apparently it was the first snowfall of the new year. I kept my mouth shut. Sure, it was drier than rain - until it melted in your socks.

I kept my guard up as I walked to the cafeteria with Jeremy after Spanish. Mush balls were flying everywhere. I kept a binder in my hands, ready to use it as a shield if necessary. Jeremy thought I was hilarious, but something in my expression kept him from lobbing a snowball at me himself.

Makayla caught up to us as we walked in the doors, laughing, with the moisture from the snow frizzing up her normally sleek hair. She and Jeremy were talking animatedly about the snow fight as we got in line to buy food. I glanced toward that table in the corner out of habit. And then I froze where I stood. There were five people at the table.

Jeremy pulled on my arm.

"Hello? Beau? What do you want?"

I looked down; my ears were hot. I had no reason to feel self-conscious, I reminded myself. I hadn't done anything wrong.

"What's with Beau?" Makayla asked Jeremy.

"Nothing," I answered. "I'll just get a soda today." I caught up to the end of the line.

"Aren't you hungry?" Jeremy asked.

"Actually, I feel a little sick," I said, my eyes still on the floor.

I waited for them to get their food, and then followed them to a table, my eyes on my feet.

I sipped my soda slowly, my stomach churning. Twice Makayla asked, with unnecessary concern, how I was feeling. I told her it was nothing, but I was wondering if I should play it up and escape to the nurse's office for the next hour. Ridiculous. I shouldn't have to run away. I decided to permit myself one glance at the Cullen family's table. If he was glaring at me, I would skip Biology, like the coward I was.

I kept my head turn away and glanced from the corner of my eye. None of them were looking this way. I turned my head a little. They were laughing. Edward, Jasper, and Emmett all had their hair entirely saturated with melting snow. Alice and Rosalie were leaning away as Emmett shook his dripping hair toward them. They were enjoying the snowy day, just like everyone else - only they looked more like a scene from a movie than the rest of us.

But, aside from the laughter and playfulness, there was something different, and I couldn't quite pinpoint what that difference was. I examined Edward the most carefully. His skin was less pale, I decided - flushed from the snow fight maybe - the circles under his eyes much less noticeable. But there was something more. I pondered, staring, trying to isolate the change.

"Beau, what are you staring at?" Jeremy intruded, his eyes following my stare.

At that precise moment, his eyes flashed over to meet mine. I turned my head, focusing directly on Jeremy. I was sure, though, in the instant our eyes met, that he didn't look harsh or unfriendly as he had the last time I'd seen him. He looked merely curious again, unsatisfied in some way.

"Edward Cullen is staring at you," Jeremy said lowly, laughing like he was confused.

"He doesn't look angry, does he?" I couldn't help asking.

"No," he said, sounding more confused by my question. "Should he be?"

"I don't think he likes me," I confided. I still felt queasy. I dropped my chin in my hands.

"The Cullens don't like anybody... well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them. But he's still staring at you."

"Stop looking at them," I hissed.

He snickered, but looked away. I was contemplating violence if he resisted.

Makayla interrupted us then - she was planning an epic battle of the blizzard in the parking lot after school and wanted us to join. Jeremy agreed enthusiastically. The way he looked at Makayla left little doubt that he would be up for anything she suggested. I kept silent. I would have to hide in the gym until the parking lot cleared.

For the rest of the lunch hour I very carefully kept my eyes at my own table. I decided to honor the bargain I'd made with myself. Since he didn't look angry, I would go to Biology. My stomach twisted at the thought of sitting next to him again.

I didn't really want to walk to class with Makayla as usual - she seemed to be a popular target for the snowball snipers - but when we went to the door, everyone besides me groaned in unison. It was raining, washing all traces of the snow away in clear, icy ribbons down the side of the walkway. I pulled my hood up, secretly pleased. I would be free to go straight home after Gym.

Makayla kept up a string of complaints on the way to building four.

Once inside the classroom, I saw with relief that my table was still empty. Mr. Banner was walking around the room, distributing one microscope and box of slides to each table. Class didn't start for a few minutes, and the room buzzed with conversation. I kept my eyes away from the door, doodling idly on the cover of my notebook.

I heard very clearly when the chair next to me moved, but my eyes stayed carefully focused on the pattern I was drawing.

"Hello," said a quiet, musical voice.

I looked up, stunned that he was speaking to me. He was sitting as far away from me as the desk allowed, but his chair was angled toward me. His hair was dripping wet, disheveled - even so, he looked like he'd just finished shooting a commercial for hair gel. His dazzling face was friendly, open, a slight smile on his flawless lips. But his eyes were careful.

"My name is Edward Cullen," he continued. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Beau Swan."

My mind was spinning with confusion. Had I made up the whole thing? He was perfectly polite now. I had to speak; he was waiting. But I couldn't think of anything conventional to say.

"H-how do you know my name?" I stammered.

He laughed a soft, enchanting laugh.

"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."

I grimaced. I knew it was something like that.

"No," I persisted stupidly. "I meant, why did you call me Beau?"

He seemed confused. "Do you prefer Beaufort?"

"Absolutely not," I said, then bit my lip, afraid I sounded rude. "But I think Charlie - I mean my dad - must call me Beaufort behind my back - that's what everyone here seems to know me as," I tried to explain, feeling like an utter moron.

"Oh." He let it drop. I looked away awkwardly.

Thankfully, Mr. Banner started class at that moment. I tried to concentrate as he explained the lab we would be doing today. The slides in the box were out of order. Working as lab partners, we had to separate the slides of onion root tip cells into the phases of mitosis they represented and label them accordingly. We weren't supposed to use our books. In twenty minutes, he would be coming around to see who had it right.

"Get started," he commanded.

"Do you want to start?" Edward asked. I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so fantastic that I could only stare at him like an idiot.

"Or I could start, if you wish." The smile faded; he was obviously wondering if I was mentally competent.

"No," I said, feeling a blush rise up my neck to my cheeks. "I'll go ahead."

I was showing off, just a little. I'd already done this lab, and I knew what I was looking for. It should be easy. I snapped the first slide into place under the microscope and adjusted it quickly to the 40X objective. I studied the slide briefly.

My assessment was confident. "Prophase."

"Do you mind if I look?" he asked as I began to remove the slide. His hand caught mine, to stop me, as he asked. His fingers were ice-cold, like he'd been holding them in a snowdrift before class. But that wasn't why I jerked my hand away so quickly. When he touched me, it stung my hand as if an electric current had passed through us.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, pulling his hand back immediately. However, he continued to reach for the microscope. I watched him, still staggered, as he examined the slide for an even shorter time than I had.

"Prophase," he agreed, writing it neatly in the first space on our worksheet. His handwriting was fluid and classic and beautiful - even his handwriting? He swiftly switched out the first slide for the second, and then glanced at it cursorily.

"Anaphase," he murmured, writing it down as he spoke.

I kept my voice indifferent. "May I?"

He smirked and pushed the microscope to me.

I looked through the eyepiece eagerly, only to be disappointed. Dang it, he was right.

"Slide three?" I held out my hand without looking at him.

He handed it to me; it seemed like he was being careful not to touch my skin again.

I took the most fleeting look I could manage.

"Interphase." I passed him the microscope before he could ask for it. He took a swift peek, and then wrote it down. I would have written it while he looked, but his clear, elegant script intimidated me. I didn't want to spoil the page with my clumsy scrawl.

We were finished before anyone else was close. I could see Makayla and her partner comparing two slides again and again, and another group had their book open under the table.

Which left me with nothing to do but try to not look at him... unsuccessfully. I glanced over, and he was staring at me, that same inexplicable look of frustration in his eyes. Suddenly I identified that subtle difference in his face.

"Did you get contacts?" I blurted out unthinkingly.

He seemed puzzled by my unexpected question. "No."

"Oh," I mumbled. "I thought there was something different about your eyes."

He shrugged, and looked away.

In fact, I was sure there was something different. I vividly remembered the flat black color of his eyes the last time he'd glared at me - the color was striking against the background of his pale skin and his auburn hair. Today, his eyes were a completely different color: a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone. I didn't understand how that could be, unless he was lying for some reason about the contacts. Or maybe Forks was making me crazy in the literal sense of the word.

I looked down. His hands were clenched into hard fists again.

Mr. Banner came to our table then, to see why we weren't working. He looked over our shoulders to glance at the completed lab, and then stared more intently to check the answers.

"So, Edward, didn't you think Beaufort should get a chance with the microscope?" Mr. Banner asked.

"Beau," Edward corrected automatically. "Actually, he identified three of the five."

Mr. Banner looked at me now; his expression was skeptical.

"Have you done this lab before?" he asked.

I smiled awkwardly. "Not with onion root."

"Whitefish blastula?"

"Yeah."

Mr. Banner nodded. "Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"

"Yes."

"Well," he said after a moment, "I guess it's good you two are lab partners." He mumbled something else as he walked away. After he left, I began doodling on my notebook again.

"It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" Edward asked. I had the feeling that he was forcing himself to make small talk with me. Paranoia swept over me again. It was like he had heard my conversation with Jeremy at lunch and was trying to prove me wrong.

"Not really," I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else. I was still trying to dislodge the stupid feeling of suspicion, and I couldn't concentrate.

"You don't like the cold." It wasn't a question.

"Or the wet."

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live," he mused.

"You have no idea," I muttered darkly.

He looked fascinated by what I said, for some reason I couldn't imagine. His face was such a distraction that I tried not to look at it any more than courtesy absolutely demanded.

"Why did you come here, then?"

No one had asked me that - not straight out like he did, demanding.

"It's... complicated."

"I think I can keep up," he pressed.

I paused for a long moment, and then made the mistake of meeting his gaze. His dark gold eyes confused me, and I answered without thinking.

"My mother got remarried," I said.

"That doesn't sound so complex," he disagreed, but he was suddenly sympathetic. "When did that happen?"

"Last September." I tried to keep my voice devoid of emotion, but I didn't think it was working.

"And you don't like him," Edward surmised, his tone still kind.

"No, Phil is fine. Too young, maybe, but nice enough."

"Why didn't you stay with them?"

I couldn't fathom his interest, but he continued to stare at me with penetrating eyes, as if my dull life's story was somehow vitally important.

"Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living." I half-smiled.

"Have I heard of him?" he asked, smiling in response.

"Probably not. He doesn't play well. Strictly minor league. He moves around a lot."

"And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him." He said it as an assumption again, not a question.

My shoulders straightened out indignantly. "No, she did not send me here. I sent myself."

His eyebrows knit together. "I don't understand," he admitted, and he seemed unnecessarily frustrated by that fact.

I sighed. Why was I explaining this to him? He continued to stare at me with obvious curiosity.

"She stayed with me at first, but she missed him. It made her unhappy... so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie." My voice was glum by the time I finished.

"But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.

"And?" I challenged.

"That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense.

I laughed without humor. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."

"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly.

"So that's all," I insisted, wondering why he was still staring at me that way.

His gaze became appraising. "You put on a good show," he said slowly. "But I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see."

I grimaced at him, resisting the impulse to stick out my tongue like a five-year-old, and looked away.

"Am I wrong?"

I tried to ignore him.

"I didn't think so," he murmured smugly.

"Why does it matter to you?" I asked, irritated. I kept my eyes away, watching the teacher make his rounds.

"That's a very good question," he muttered, so quietly that I wondered if he was talking to himself. However, after a few seconds of silence, I decided that was the only answer I was going to get.

I sighed, scowling at the blackboard.

"Am I annoying you?" he asked. He sounded amused.

I glanced at him without thinking... and told the truth again. "Not exactly. I'm more annoyed at myself. My face is so easy to read - my mother always calls me her open book." I frowned.

"On the contrary, I find you very difficult to read." Despite everything that I'd said and he'd guessed, he sounded like he meant it.

"You must be a good reader then," I replied.

"Usually." He smiled widely, flashing a set of perfect, ultrawhite teeth.

Mr. Banner called the class to order then, and I turned with relief to listen. I was in disbelief that I'd just explained my dreary life to this bizarre, god-like boy who may or may not despise me. He'd seemed engrossed in our conversation, but now I could see, from the corner of my eye, that he was leaning away from me again, his hands gripping the edge of the table with unmistakable tension.

I tried to appear attentive as Mr. Banner illustrated, with transparencies on the overhead projector, what I had seen without difficulty through the microscope. But my thoughts were unmanageable.

When the bell finally rang, Edward rushed as swiftly and as gracefully from the room as he had last Monday. And, like last Monday, I stared after him in amazement.

Makayla skipped quickly to my side and waited for me. I imagined her with a wagging tail.

"That was awful," she groaned. "They all looked exactly the same. You're lucky you had Cullen for a partner."

"I didn't have any trouble with it," I said, stung by her assumption. I regretted the snub instantly. "I've done the lab before, though," I added before she could get her feelings hurt.

"Cullen seemed friendly enough today," she commented as we shrugged into our raincoats. She didn't seem pleased about it.

I tried to sound indifferent. "I wonder what was with him last Monday."

I couldn't concentrate on Makayla's chatter as we walked to Gym, and P.E. didn't do much to hold my attention, either. Makayla was on my team today. She chivalrously covered my position as well as her own, so my woolgathering was only interrupted when it was my turn to serve; my team ducked warily out of the way every time I was up.

The rain was just a mist as I walked to the parking lot, but I was happier when I was in the dry cab. I got the heater running, for once not caring about the mind-numbing roar of the engine. I unzipped my jacket, put the hood down, and held my cold hands in front of the heater.

I looked around me to make sure it was clear. That's when I noticed the still, white figure. Edward Cullen was leaning against the front door of the Volvo, three cars down from me, and staring intently in my direction. I swiftly looked away and threw the truck into reverse, almost hitting a rusty Toyota Corolla in my haste. Lucky for the Toyota, I stomped on the brake in time. It was just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of. I took a deep breath, still looking out the other side of my car, and cautiously pulled out again, with greater success. I stared straight ahead as I passed the Volvo, but from a peripheral peek, I would swear I saw him laughing.


	4. open book Edward pov

I leaned back against the soft snow bank, letting the dry powder reshape itself around my weight. My skin had cooled to match the air around me, and the tiny pieces of ice felt like velvet under my skin.

The sky above me was clear, brilliant with stars, glowing blue in some places, yellow in others. The stars created majestic, swirling shapes against the black universe - an awesome sight. Exquisitely beautiful. Or rather, it should have been exquisite.

Would have been, if I'd been able to really see it.

It wasn't getting any better. Six days had passed, six days I'd hidden here in the empty Denali wilderness, but I was no closer to freedom than I had been since the first moment that I'd caught his scent.

When I stared up at the jeweled sky, it was as if there were an obstruction between my eyes and their beauty. The obstruction was a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn't quite seem to banish it from my mind.

I heard the approaching thoughts before I heard the footsteps that accompanied them. The sound of movement was only a faint whisper against the powder.

I was not surprised that Tanya had followed me here. I knew she'd been mulling over this coming conversation for the last few days, putting it off until she was sure of exactly what she wanted to say.

She sprang into sight about sixty yards away, leaping onto the tip of an outcropping of black rock and balancing there on the balls of her bare feet.

Tanya's skin was silver in the starlight, and her long blond curls shone pale, almost pink with their strawberry tint. Her amber eyes glinted as she spied me, halfburied in the snow, and her full lips stretched slowly into a smile.

Exquisite. If I'd really been able to see her. I sighed.

She crouched down on the point of the stone, her fingertips touching the rock, her body coiled.

Cannonball, she thought.

She launched herself into the air; her shape became a dark, twisting shadow as she spun gracefully between me and the stars. She curled herself into a ball just as she struck the piled snow bank beside me.

A blizzard of snow flew up around me. The stars went black and I was buried deep in the feathery ice crystals.

I sighed again, but didn't move to unearth myself. The blackness under the snow neither hurt nor improved the view. I still saw the same face.

"Edward?"

Then snow was flying again as Tanya swiftly disinterred me. She brushed the powder from my unmoving face, not quite meeting my eyes.

"Sorry," she murmured. "It was a joke."

"I know. It was funny."

Her mouth twisted down.

"Irina and Kate said I should leave you alone. They think I'm annoying you." "Not at all," I assured her. "On the contrary, I'm the one who's being rude - abominably rude. I'm very sorry."

You're going home, aren't you? she thought.

"I haven't...entirely...decided that yet."

But you're not staying here. Her thought was wistful now, sad.

"No. It doesn't seem to be...helping."

She grimaced. "That's my fault, isn't it?"

"Of course not," I lied smoothly.

Don't be a gentleman.

I smiled.

I make you uncomfortable, she accused.

"No."

She raised one eyebrow, her expression so disbelieving that I had to laugh. One short laugh, followed by another sigh.

"All right," I admitted. "A little bit."

She sighed, too, and put her chin in her hands. Her thoughts were chagrined.

"You're a thousand times lovelier than the stars, Tanya. Of course, you're already well aware of that. Don't let my stubbornness undermine your confidence." I chuckled at the unlikeliness of that.

"I'm not used to rejection," she grumbled, her lower lip pushing out into an attractive pout.

"Certainly not," I agreed, trying with little success to block out her thoughts as she fleetingly sifted through memories of her thousands of successful conquests. Mostly Tanya preferred human men - they were much more populous for one thing, with the added advantage of being soft and warm. And always eager, definitely.

"Succubus," I teased, hoping to interrupt the images flickering in her head. She grinned, flashing her teeth. "The original."

Unlike Carlisle, Tanya and her sisters had discovered their consciences slowly. In the end, it was their fondness for human men that turned the sisters against the slaughter. Now the men they loved...lived.

"When you showed up here," Tanya said slowly. "I thought that..." I'd known what she'd thought. And I should have guessed that she would have felt that way. But I hadn't been at my best for analytical thinking in that moment.

"You thought that I'd changed my mind."

"Yes." She scowled.

"I feel horrible for toying with your expectations, Tanya. I didn't mean to - I wasn't thinking. It's just that I left in...quite a hurry."

"I don't suppose you'd tell me why...?"

I sat up and wrapped my arms around my legs, curling defensively. "I don't want to talk about it."

Tanya, Irina and Kate were very good at this life they'd committed to. Better, in some ways, than even Carlisle. Despite the insanely close proximity they allowed themselves with those who should be - and once were - their prey, they did not make mistakes. I was too ashamed to admit my weakness to Tanya.

"Woman troubles?" she guessed, ignoring my reluctance.

I laughed a bleak laugh. "Not the way you mean it."

She was quiet then. I listened to her thoughts as she ran through different guesses, tried to decipher the meaning of my words.

"You're not even close," I told her.

"One hint?" she asked.

"Please let it go, Tanya."

She was quiet again, still speculating. I ignored her, trying in vain to appreciate the stars.

She gave up after a silent moment, and her thoughts pursued a new direction.

Where will you go, Edward, if you leave? Back to Carlisle?

"I don't think so," I whispered.

Where would I go? I could not think of one place on the entire planet that held any interest for me. There was nothing I wanted to see or do. Because, no matter where I went, I would not be going to anywhere - I would only be running from.

I hated that. When had I become such a coward?

Tanya threw her slender arm around my shoulders. I stiffened, but did not flinch out from under her touch. She meant it as nothing more than friendly comfort. Mostly. "I think that you will go back," she said, her voice taking on just a hint of her long lost Russian accent. "No matter what it is...or who it is...that is haunting you. You'll face it head on. You're the type."

Her thoughts were as certain as her words. I tried to embrace the vision of myself that she carried in her head. The one who faced things head on. It was pleasant to think of myself that way again. I'd never doubted my courage, my ability to face difficulty, before that horrible hour in a high school biology class such a short time ago.

I kissed her cheek, pulling back swiftly when she twisted her face toward mine, her lips already puckered. She smiled ruefully at my quickness.

"Thank you, Tanya. I needed to hear that."

Her thoughts turned petulant. "You're welcome, I guess. I wish you would be more reasonable about things, Edward."

"I'm sorry, Tanya. You know you're too good for me. I just...haven't found what I'm looking for yet."

"Well, if you leave before I see you again...goodbye, Edward."

"Goodbye, Tanya." As I said the words, I could see it. I could see myself leaving. Being strong enough to go back to the one place where I wanted to be. "Thanks again."

She was on her feet in one nimble move, and then she was running away, ghosting across the snow so quickly that her feet had no time to sink into the snow; she left no prints behind her. She didn't look back. My rejection bothered her more than she'd let on before, even in her thoughts. She wouldn't want to see me again before I left.

My mouth twisted with chagrin. I didn't like hurting Tanya, though her feelings were not deep, hardly pure, and, in any case, not something I could return. It still made me feel less than a gentleman.

I put my chin on my knees and stared up at the stars again, though I was suddenly anxious to be on my way. I knew that Alice would see me coming home, that she would tell the others. This would make them happy - Carlisle and Esme especially. But I gazed at the stars for one more moment, trying to see past the face in my head. Between me and the brilliant lights in the sky, a pair of bewildered chocolate-brown eyes stared back at me, seeming to ask what this decision would mean for him. Of course, I couldn't be sure if that was really the information his curious eyes sought. Even in my imagination, I couldn't hear his thoughts. Beau Swan's eyes continued to question, and an unobstructed view of the stars continued to elude me. With a heavy sigh, I gave up, and got to my feet. If I ran, I would be back to Carlisle's car in less than an hour...

In a hurry to see my family - and wanting very much to be the Edward that faced things head on - I raced across the starlit snowfield, leaving no footprints.

"It's going to be okay," Alice breathed. Her eyes were unfocused, and Jasper had one hand lightly under her elbow, guiding her forward as we walked into the rundown cafeteria in a close group. Rosalie and Emmett led the way, Emmett looking ridiculously like a bodyguard in the middle of hostile territory. Rose looked wary, too, but much more irritated than protective.

"Of course it is," I grumbled. Their behavior was ludicrous. If I wasn't positive that I could handle this moment, I would have stayed home.

The sudden shift from our normal, even playful morning - it had snowed in the night, and Emmett and Jasper were not above taking advantage of my distraction to bombard me with slushballs; when they got bored with my lack of response, they'd turned on each other - to this overdone vigilance would have been comical if it weren't so irritating.

"He's not here yet, but the way he's going to come in...he won't be downwind if we sit in our regular spot."

"Of course we'll sit in our regular spot. Stop it, Alice. You're getting on my nerves. I'll be absolutely fine."

She blinked once as Jasper helped her into her seat, and her eyes finally focused on my face.

"Hmm," she said, sounding surprised. "I think you're right."

"Of course I am," I muttered.

I hated being the focus of their concern. I felt a sudden sympathy for Jasper, remembering all the times we'd hovered protectively over him. He met my glance briefly, and grinned.

Annoying, isn't it?

I grimaced at him.

Was it just last week that this long, drab room had seemed so killingly dull to me? That it had seemed almost like sleep, like a coma, to be here?

Today my nerves were stretched tight - piano wires, tensed to sing at the lightest pressure. My senses were hyper-alert; I scanned every sound, every sight, every movement of the air that touched my skin, every thought. Especially the thoughts. There was only one sense that I kept locked down, refused to use. Smell, of course. I didn't breathe.

I was expecting to hear more about the Cullens in the thoughts that I sifted through. All day I'd been waiting, searching for whichever new acquaintance Beau Swan might have confided in, trying to see the direction the new gossip would take. But there was nothing. No one noticed the five vampires in the cafeteria, just the same as before the new boy had come. Several of the humans here were still thinking of that boy, still thinking the same thoughts from last week. Instead of finding this unutterably boring, I was now fascinated.

Had he said nothing to anyone about me?

There was no way that he had not noticed my black, murderous glare. I had seen him react to it. Surely, I'd scared him silly. I had been convinced that he would have mentioned it to someone, maybe even exaggerated the story a bit to make it better. Given me a few menacing lines.

And then, he'd also heard me trying to get out of our shared biology class. He must have wondered, after seeing my expression, whether he were the cause. A normal boy would have asked around, compared his experience to others, looked for common ground that would explain my behavior so he didn't feel singled out. Humans were constantly desperate to feel normal, to fit in. To blend in with everyone else around them, like a featureless flock of sheep. The need was particularly strong during the insecure adolescent years. This boy would be no exception to that rule.

But no one at all took any notice of us sitting here, at our normal table. Beau must be exceptionally shy, if he'd confided in no one. Perhaps he had spoken to his father, maybe that was the strongest relationship...though that seemed unlikely, given the fact that he had spent so little time with him throughout his life. He would be closer to his mother. Still, I would have to pass by Chief Swan sometime soon and listen to what he was thinking.

"Anything new?" Jasper asked.

"Nothing. He...must not have said anything."

All of them raised an eyebrow at this news.

"Maybe you're not as scary as you think you are," Emmett said, chuckling. "I bet I could have frightened him better than that."

I rolled my eyes at him.

"Wonder why...?" He puzzled again over my revelation about the boy's unique silence.

"We've been over that. I don't know."

"He's coming in," Alice murmured then. I felt my body go rigid. "Try to look human."

"Human, you say?" Emmett asked.

He held up his right fist, twisting his fingers to reveal the snowball he'd saved in his palm. Of course it had not melted there. He'd squeezed it into a lumpy block of ice. He had his eyes on Jasper, but I saw the direction of his thoughts. So did Alice, of course. When he abruptly hurled the ice chunk at her, she flicked it away with a casual flutter of her fingers. The ice ricocheted across the length of the cafeteria, too fast to be visible to human eyes, and shattered with a sharp crack against the brick wall. The brick cracked, too.

The heads in that corner of the room all turned to stare at the pile of broken ice on the floor, and then swiveled to find the culprit. They didn't look further than a few tables away. No one looked at us.

"Very human, Emmett," Rosalie said scathingly. "Why don't you punch through the wall while you're at it?"

"It would look more impressive if you did it, baby."

I tried to pay attention to them, keeping a grin fixed on my face like I was part of their banter. I did not allow myself to look toward the line where I knew he was standing. But that was all that I was listening to.

I could hear Jeremy's impatience with the new boy, who seemed to be distracted, too, standing motionless in the moving line. I saw, in Jeremy's thoughts, that Beau Swan's cheeks were once more colored bright pink with blood.

I pulled in short, shallow breaths, ready to quit breathing if any hint of his scent touched the air near me.

Makayla Newton was with the two boys. I heard both her voices, mental and verbal, when she asked Jeremy what was wrong with the Swan boy. I didn't like the way her thoughts wrapped around him, the flicker of already established fantasies that clouded her mind while she watched him start and look up from his reverie like he'd forgotten she was there.

"Nothing," I heard Beau say in that quiet, clear voice. It seemed to ring like a bell over the babble in the cafeteria, but I knew that was just because I was listening for it so intently.

"I'll just get a soda today," he continued as he moved to catch up with the line. I couldn't help flickering one glance in his direction. He was staring at the floor, the blood slowly fading from his face. I looked away quickly, to Emmett, who laughed at the now pained-looking smile on my face.

You look sick, bro.

I rearranged my features so the expression would seem casual and effortless. Jeremy was wondering aloud about the boy's lack of appetite. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Actually, I feel a little sick." His voice was lower, but still very clear. Why did it bother me, the protective concern that suddenly emanated from Makayla Newton's thoughts? What did it matter that there was a possessive edge to them? It wasn't my business if Makayla Newton felt unnecessarily anxious for him. Perhaps this was the way everyone responded to him. Hadn't I wanted, instinctively, to protect him, too? Before I'd wanted to kill him, that is...

But was the boy ill?

It was hard to judge - he looked so delicate with his translucent skin... Then I realized that I was worrying, too, just like that dimwitted girl, and I forced myself not to think about his health.

Regardless, I didn't like monitoring him through Makayla's thoughts. I switched to Jeremy's, watching carefully as the three of them chose which table to sit at. Fortunately, they sat with Jeremy's usual companions, at one of the first tables in the room. Not downwind, just as Alice had promised.

Alice elbowed me. He's going to look soon, act human.

I clenched my teeth behind my grin.

"Ease up, Edward," Emmett said. "Honestly. So you kill one human. That's hardly the end of the world."

"You would know," I murmured.

Emmett laughed. "You've got to learn to get over things. Like I do. Eternity is a long time to wallow in guilt."

Just then, Alice tossed a smaller handful of ice that she'd been hiding into Emmett's unsuspecting face.

He blinked, surprised, and then grinned in anticipation.

"You asked for it," he said as he leaned across the table and shook his ice encrusted hair in her direction. The snow, melting in the warm room, flew out from his hair in a thick shower of half-liquid, half-ice.

"Ew!" Rose complained, as she and Alice recoiled from the deluge.

Alice laughed, and we all joined in. I could see in Alice's head how she'd orchestrated this perfect moment, and I knew that the boy - I should stop thinking of him that way, as if he were the only boy in the world - that Beau would be watching us laugh and play, looking as happy and human and unrealistically ideal as a Norman Rockwell painting.

Alice kept laughing, and held her tray up as a shield. The boy - Beau must still be staring at us.

...staring at the Cullens again, someone thought, catching my attention.

I looked automatically toward the unintentional call, realizing as my eyes found their destination that I recognized the voice - I'd been listening to it so much today. But my eyes slid right past Jeremy, and focused on the boy's penetrating gaze. He looked down quickly, hiding behind his hand again.

What was he thinking? The frustration seemed to be getting more acute as time went on, rather than dulling. I tried - uncertain in what I was doing for I'd never tried this before - to probe with my mind at the silence around him. My extra hearing had always come to me naturally, without asking; I'd never had to work at it. But I concentrated now, trying to break through whatever shield surrounded him.

Nothing but silence.

What is it about him geez Never knew Edward Cullen was gay or is he? Jeremy thought, echoing my own I'm not gay. That was a big no no in my time.

"Edward Cullen is staring at you," he whispered in the Swan boy's ear, adding a laugh. There was only a little hint of his confused irritation in his tone. Jeremy seemed to be skilled at feigning friendship.

I listened, too engrossed, to the boy's response.

"He doesn't look angry, does he?" he whispered back.

So he had noticed my wild reaction last week. Of course he had.

The question confused Jeremy. I saw my own face in his thoughts as he checked my expression, but I did not meet his glance. I was still concentrating on the boy, trying to hear something. My intent focus didn't seem to be helping at all.

"No," Jeremy told him, and I knew that he wished he could say yes - how it rankled inside him, my staring - though there was no trace of that in his voice. "Should he be?" "I don't think he likes me," the boy whispered back, laying his head down on his arm as if he were suddenly tired. I tried to understand the motion, but I could only make guesses. Maybe he was tired.

"The Cullens don't like anybody," Jeremy reassured him. "Well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them." They never used to. His thought was a grumble of complaint. "But he's still staring at you."

"Stop looking at him," the boy said anxiously, lifting his head from his arm to make sure Jeremy obeyed the order.

Jeremy snickered, but did as he was asked.

The boy did not look away from his table for the rest of the hour. I thought - though, of course, I could not be sure - that this was deliberate. It seemed like he wanted to look at me. His body would shift slightly in my direction, his chin would begin to turn, and then he would catch himself, take a deep breath, and stare fixedly at whoever was speaking.

I ignored the other thoughts around the boy for the most part, as they were not, momentarily, about him. Makayla Newton was planning a snow fight in the parking lot after school, not seeming to realize that the snow had already shifted to rain. The flutter of soft flakes against the roof had become the more common patter of raindrops. Could she really not hear the change? It seemed loud to me.

When the lunch period ended, I stayed in my seat. The humans filed out, and I caught myself trying to distinguish the sound of his footsteps from the sound of the rest, as if there was something important or unusual about them. How stupid.

My family made no move to leave, either. They waited to see what I would do.

Would I go to class, sit beside the boy where I could smell the absurdly potent scent of his blood and feel the warmth of his pulse in the air on my skin? Was I strong enough for that? Or had I had enough for one day?

"I...think it's okay," Alice said, hesitant. "Your mind is set. I think you'll make it through the hour."

But Alice knew well how quickly a mind could change.

"Why push it, Edward?" Jasper asked. Though he didn't want to feel smug that I was the one who was weak now, I could hear that he did, just a little. "Go home. Take it slow."

"What's the big deal?" Emmett disagreed. "Either he will or he won't kill him. Might as well get it over with, either way."

"I don't want to move yet," Rosalie complained. "I don't want to start over. We're almost out of high school, Emmett. Finally."

I was evenly torn on the decision. I wanted, wanted badly, to face this head on rather than running away again. But I didn't want to push myself too far, either. It had been a mistake last week for Jasper to go so long without hunting; was this just as pointless a mistake?

I didn't want to uproot my family. None of them would thank me for that.

But I wanted to go to my biology class. I realized that I wanted to see his face again.

That's what decided it for me. That curiosity. I was angry with myself for feeling it. Hadn't I promised myself that I wouldn't let the silence of the boy's mind make me unduly interested in him? And yet, here I was, most unduly interested.

I wanted to know what he was thinking. His mind was closed, but his eyes were very open. Perhaps I could read them instead.

"No, Rose, I think it really will be okay," Alice said. "It's...firming up. I'm ninety-three percent sure that nothing bad will happen if he goes to class." She looked at me inquisitively, wondering what had changed in my thoughts that made her vision of the future more secure.

Would curiosity be enough to keep Beau Swan alive?

Emmett was right, though - why not get it over with, either way? I would face the temptation head on.

"Go to class," I ordered, pushing away from the table. I turned and strode away from them without looking back. I could hear Alice's worry, Jasper's censure, Emmett's approval, and Rosalie's irritation trailing after me.

I took one last deep breath at the door of the classroom, and then held it in my lungs as I walked into the small, warm space.

I was not late. Mr. Banner was still setting up for today's lab. The boy sat at my - at our table, his face down again, staring at the folder he was doodling on. I examined the sketch as I approached, interested in even this trivial creation of his mind, but it was meaningless. Just a random scribbling of loops within loops. Perhaps he was not concentrating on the pattern, but thinking of something else?

I pulled my chair back with unnecessary roughness, letting it scrape across the linoleum; humans always felt more comfortable when noise announced someone's approach.

I knew he heard the sound; he did not look up, but his hand missed a loop in the design he was drawing, making it unbalanced.

Why didn't he look up? Probably he was frightened. I must be sure to leave him with a different impression this time. Make him think he'd been imagining things before.

"Hello," I said in the quiet voice I used when I wanted to make humans more comfortable, forming a polite smile with my lips that would not show any teeth.

He looked up then, his wide brown eyes startled - almost bewildered - and full of silent questions. It was the same expression that had been obstructing my vision for the last week.

As I stared into those oddly deep brown eyes, I realized that the hate - the hate I'd imagined this boy somehow deserved for simply existing - had evaporated. Not breathing now, not tasting his scent, it was hard to believe that anyone so vulnerable could ever justify hatred.

His cheeks began to flush, and he said nothing.

I kept my eyes on his, focusing only on their questioning depths, and tried to ignore the appetizing color of his skin. I had enough breath to speak for a while longer without inhaling.

"My name is Edward Cullen," I said, though I knew he knew that. It was the polite way to begin. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Beau Swan."

He seemed confused - there was that little pucker between his eyes again. It took him half a second longer than it should have for him to respond. "How do you know my name?" he demanded, and his voice shook just a little.

I must have truly terrified him. This made me feel guilty; he was just so defenseless. I laughed gently - it was a sound that I knew made humans more at ease. Again, I was careful about my teeth.

"Oh, I think everyone knows your name." Surely he must have realized that he'd become the center of attention in this monotonous place. "The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."

He frowned as if this information was unpleasant. I supposed, being shy as he seemed to be, attention would seem like a bad thing to him. Most humans felt the opposite. Though they didn't want to stand out from the herd, at the same time they craved a spotlight for their individual uniformity.

"No," he said. "I meant, why did you call me Beau?"

"Do you prefer Beaufort?" I asked, perplexed by the fact that I couldn't see where this question was leading. I didn't understand. Surely, he'd made his preference clear many times that first day. Were all humans this incomprehensible without the mental context as a guide?

"No, I like Beau," he answered, leaning his head slightly to one side. His expression - if I was reading it correctly - was torn between embarrassment and confusion. "But I think Charlie - I mean my dad - must call me Beaufort behind my back. That's what everyone here seems to know me as." His skin darkened one shade pinker.

"Oh," I said lamely, and quickly looked away from his face.

I'd just realized what his questions meant: I had slipped up - made an error. If I hadn't been eavesdropping on all the others that first day, then I would have addressed him initially by his full name, just like everyone else. He'd noticed the difference. I felt a pang of unease. It was very quick of him to pick up on my slip. Quite astute, especially for someone who was supposed to be terrified by my nearness.

But I had bigger problems than whatever suspicions about me he might be keeping locked inside his head.

I was out of air. If I were going to speak to him again, I would have to inhale. It would be hard to avoid speaking. Unfortunately for him, sharing this table made him my lab partner, and we would have to work together today. It would seem odd - and incomprehensibly rude - for me to ignore him while we did the lab. It would make him more suspicious, more afraid...

I leaned as far away from him as I could without moving my seat, twisting my head out into the aisle. I braced myself, locking my muscles in place, and then sucked in one quick chest-full of air, breathing through my mouth alone.

Ahh!

It was genuinely painful. Even without smelling him, I could taste him on my tongue. My throat was suddenly in flames again, the craving every bit as strong as that first moment I'd caught his scent last week.

I gritted my teeth together and tried to compose myself.

"Get started," Mr. Banner commanded.

It felt like it took every single ounce of self-control that I'd achieved in seventy years of hard work to turn back to the boy, who was staring down at the table, and smile. "do you want to start?" I offered.

He looked up at my expression and his face went blank, his eyes wide. Was there something off in my expression? Was he frightened again? He didn't speak. "Or, I could start, if you wish," I said quietly.

"No," he said, and his face went from white to red again. "I'll go first."

I stared at the equipment on the table, the battered microscope, the box of slides, rather than watch the blood swirl under his clear skin. I took another quick breath, through my teeth, and winced as the taste made my throat ache.

"Prophase," he said after a quick examination. He started to remove the slide, though he'd barely examined it.

"Do you mind if I look?" Instinctively - stupidly, as if I were one of his kind - I reached out to stop his hand from removing the slide. For one second, the heat of his skin burned into mine. It was like an electric pulse - surely much hotter than a mere ninety-eight point nine degrees. The heat shot through my hand and up my arm. He yanked his hand out from under mine.

"I'm sorry," I muttered through my clenched teeth. Needing somewhere to look, I grasped the microscope and stared briefly into the eyepiece. He was right.

"Prophase," I agreed.

I was still too unsettled to look at him. Breathing as quietly as I could through my gritted teeth and trying to ignore the fiery thirst, I concentrated on the simple assignment, writing the word on the appropriate line on the lab sheet, and then switching out the first slide for the next.

What was he thinking now? What had that felt like to him, when I had touched his hand? My skin must have been ice cold - repulsive. No wonder he was so quiet. I glanced at the slide.

"Anaphase," I said to myself as I wrote it on the second line.

"May I?" he asked.

I looked up at him, surprised to see that he was waiting expectantly, one hand half-stretched toward the microscope. He didn't look afraid. Did he really think I'd gotten the answer wrong?

I couldn't help but smile at the hopeful look on his face as I slid the microscope toward him.

He stared into the eyepiece with an eagerness that quickly faded. The corners of his mouth turned down.

"Slide three?" he asked, not looking up from the microscope, but holding out his hand. I dropped the next slide into his hand, not letting my skin come anywhere close to his this time. Sitting beside him was like sitting next to a heat lamp. I could feel myself warming slightly to the higher temperature.

He did not look at the slide for long. "Interphase," he said nonchalantly - perhaps trying a little too hard to sound that way - and pushed the microscope to me. He did not touch the paper, but waited for me to write the answer. I checked - he was correct again.

We finished this way, speaking one word at a time and never meeting each other's eyes. We were the only ones done - the others in the class were having a harder time with the lab. Makayla Newton seemed to be having trouble concentrating - she was trying to watch Beau and me.

Wish he'd stayed wherever he went, Makayla thought, eyeing me sulfurously. Hmm, interesting. I hadn't realized the girl harbored any ill will towards me. This was a new development, about as recent as the boy's arrival it seemed. Even more interesting, I found - to my surprise - that the feeling was mutual.

I looked up at the boy again, bemused by the wide range of havoc and upheaval that, despite his ordinary, unthreatening appearance, he was wreaking on my life. It wasn't that I couldn't see what Makayla was going on about. He was actually rather handsome...in an unusual way. Better than being handsome, his face was interesting. Not quite symmetrical - his narrow chin out of balance with his wide cheekbones; extreme in the coloring - the light and dark contrast of his skin and his hair; and then there were the eyes, brimming over with silent secrets...

Eyes that were suddenly boring into mine.

I stared back at him, trying to guess even one of those secrets.

"Did you get contacts?" he asked abruptly.

What a strange question. "No." I almost smiled at the idea of improving my eyesight.

"Oh," he mumbled. "I thought there was something different about your eyes." I felt suddenly colder again as I realized that I was apparently not the only one attempting to ferret out secrets today.

I shrugged, my shoulders stiff, and glared straight ahead to where the teacher was making his rounds.

Of course there was something different about my eyes since the last time he'd stared into them. To prepare myself for today's ordeal, today's temptation, I'd spent the entire weekend hunting, satiating my thirst as much as possible, overdoing it really. I'd glutted myself on the blood of animals, not that it made much difference in the face of the outrageous flavor floating on the air around him. When I'd glared at him last, my eyes had been black with thirst. Now, my body swimming with blood, my eyes were a warmer gold. Light amber from my excessive attempt at thirst-quenching.

Another slip. If I'd seen what he'd meant with his question, I could have just told him yes.

I'd sat beside humans for two years now at this school, and he was the first to examine me closely enough to note the change in my eye color. The others, while admiring the beauty of my family, tended to look down quickly when we returned their stares. They shied away, blocking the details of our appearances in an instinctive endeavor to keep themselves from understanding. Ignorance was bliss to the human mind.

Why did it have to be this boy who would see too much?

Mr. Banner approached our table. I gratefully inhaled the gush of clean air he brought with him before it could mix with his scent.

"So, Edward," he said, looking over our answers, "didn't you think Beaufort should get a chance with the microscope?"

"Beau," I corrected him reflexively. "Actually, he identified three of the five." Mr. Banner's thoughts were skeptical as he turned to look at the boy. "Have you done this lab before?"

I watched, engrossed, as he smiled, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Not with onion root."

"Whitefish blastula?" Mr. Banner probed.

"Yeah."

This surprised him. Today's lab was something he'd pulled from a more advanced course. He nodded thoughtfully at the boy. "Were you in an advanced placement program in Phoenix?"

"Yes."

He was advanced then, intelligent for a human. This did not surprise me.

"Well," Mr. Banner said, pursing his lips. "I guess it's good you two are lab partners." He turned and walked away mumbling, "So the other kids can get a chance to learn something for themselves," under his breath. I doubted the boy could hear that. He began scrawling loops across his folder again.

Two slips so far in one half hour. A very poor showing on my part. Though I had no idea at all what the boy thought of me - how much did he fear, how much did he suspect? - I knew I needed to put forth a better effort to leave him with a new impression of me. Something to better drown his memories of our ferocious last encounter. "It's too bad about the snow, isn't it?" I said, repeating the small talk that I'd heard a dozen students discuss already. A boring, standard topic of conversation. The weather - always safe.

He stared at me with obvious doubt in his eyes - an abnormal reaction to my very normal words. "Not really," he said, surprising me again.

I tried to steer the conversation back to trite paths. He was from a much brighter, warmer place - his skin seemed to reflect that somehow, despite its fairness - and the cold must make him uncomfortable. My icy touch certainly had...

"You don't like the cold," I guessed.

"Or the wet," he agreed.

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live." Perhaps you should not have come here, I wanted to add. Perhaps you should go back where you belong.

I wasn't sure I wanted that, though. I would always remember the scent of his blood - was there any guarantee that I wouldn't eventually follow after him? Besides, if he left, his mind would forever remain a mystery. A constant, nagging puzzle. "You have no idea," he said in a low voice, glowering past me for a moment.

His answers were never what I expected. They made me want to ask more questions.

"Why did you come here, then?" I demanded, realizing instantly that my tone was too accusatory, not casual enough for the conversation. The question sounded rude, prying.

"It's...complicated."

He blinked his wide eyes, leaving it at that, and I nearly imploded out of curiosity - the curiosity burned as hot as the thirst in my throat. Actually, I found that it was getting slightly easier to breathe; the agony was becoming more bearable through familiarity.

"I think I can keep up," I insisted. Perhaps common courtesy would keep him answering my questions as long as I was rude enough to ask them.

He stared down silently at his hands. This made me impatient; I wanted to put my hand under his chin and tilt his head up so that I could read his eyes. But it would be foolish of me - dangerous - to touch his skin again.

He looked up suddenly. It was a relief to be able to see the emotions in his eyes again. He spoke in a rush, hurrying through the words.

"My mother got remarried."

Ah, this was human enough, easy to understand. Sadness passed through his clear eyes and brought the pucker back between them.

"That doesn't sound so complex," I said. My voice was gentle without my working to make it that way. His sadness left me feeling oddly helpless, wishing there was something I could do to make him feel better. A strange impulse. "When did that happen?"

"Last September." He exhaled heavily - not quite a sigh. I held my breath as his warm breath brushed my face.

"And you don't like him," I guessed, fishing for more information.

"No, Phil is fine," he said, correcting my assumption. There was a hint of a smile now around the corners of his lips. "Too young, maybe, but nice enough." This didn't fit with the scenario I'd been constructing in my head.

"Why didn't you stay with them?" I asked, my voice a little too curious. It sounded like I was being nosy. Which I was, admittedly.

"Phil travels a lot. He plays ball for a living." The little smile grew more pronounced; this career choice amused him.

I smiled, too, without choosing to. I wasn't trying to make him feel at ease. His smile just made me want to smile in response - to be in on the secret.

"Have I heard of him?" I ran through the rosters of professional ball players in my head, wondering which Phil was his...

"Probably not. He doesn't play well." Another smile. "Strictly minor league. He moves around a lot."

The rosters in my head shifted instantly, and I'd tabulated a list of possibilities in less than a second. At the same time, I was imagining the new scenario.

"And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him," I said.

Making assumptions seemed to get more information out of him than questions did. It worked again. His chin jutted out, and his expression was suddenly stubborn.

"No, she did not send me here," he said, and his voice had a new, hard edge to it. My assumption had upset him, though I couldn't quite see how. "I sent myself."

I could not guess at his meaning, or the source behind his pique. I was entirely lost.

So I gave up. There was just no making sense of the boy. He wasn't like other humans. Maybe the silence of his thoughts and the perfume of his scent were not the only unusual things about him.

"I don't understand," I admitted, hating to concede.

He sighed, and stared into my eyes for longer than most normal humans were able to stand.

"She stayed with me at first, but she missed him," he explained slowly, his tone growing more forlorn with each word. "It made her unhappy...so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie."

The tiny pucker between his eyes deepened.

"But now you're unhappy," I murmured. I couldn't seem to stop speaking my hypotheses aloud, hoping to learn from his reactions. This one, however, did not seem as far off the mark.

"And?" he said, as if this was not even an aspect to be considered.

I continued to stare into his eyes, feeling that I'd finally gotten my first real glimpse into his soul. I saw in that one word where he ranked hisself among his own priorities. Unlike most humans, his own needs were far down the list. He was selfless.

As I saw this, the mystery of the person hiding inside this quiet mind began to thin a little.

"That doesn't seem fair," I said. I shrugged, trying to seem casual, trying to conceal the intensity of my curiosity.

He laughed, but there was no amusement to the sound. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."

I wanted to laugh at his words, though I, too, felt no real amusement. I knew a little something about the unfairness of life. "I believe I have heard that somewhere before."

He stared back at me, seeming confused again. His eyes flickered away, and then came back to mine.

"So that's all," he told me.

But I was not ready to let this conversation end. The little V between his eyes, a remnant of his sorrow, bothered me. I wanted to smooth it away with my fingertip. But, of course, I could not touch him. It was unsafe in so many ways.

"You put on a good show." I spoke slowly, still considering this next hypothesis.

"But I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see." He made a face, his eyes narrowing and his mouth twisting into a lopsided pout, and he looked back towards the front of the class. He didn't like it when I guessed right. He wasn't the average martyr - he didn't want an audience to his pain.

"Am I wrong?"

He flinched slightly, but otherwise pretended not to hear me.

That made me smile. "I didn't think so."

"Why does it matter to you?" he demanded, still staring away.

"That's a very good question," I admitted, more to myself than to answer him.

His discernment was better than mine - he saw right to the core of things while I floundered around the edges, sifting blindly through clues. The details of his very human life should not matter to me. It was wrong for me to care what he thought. Beyond protecting my family from suspicion, human thoughts were not significant.

I was not used to being the less intuitive of any pairing. I relied on my extra hearing too much - I clearly was not as perceptive as I gave myself credit for.

The boy sighed and glowered toward the front of the classroom. Something about his frustrated expression was humorous. The whole situation, the whole conversation was humorous. No one had ever been in more danger from me than this little boy - at any moment I might, distracted by my ridiculous absorption in the conversation, inhale through my nose and attack him before I could stop myself - and he was irritated because I hadn't answered his question.

"Am I annoying you?" I asked, smiling at the absurdity of it all.

He glanced at me quickly, and then his eyes seemed to get trapped by my gaze.

"Not exactly," he told me. "I'm more annoyed at myself. My face is so easy to read - my mother always calls me her open book."

He frowned, disgruntled.

I stared at him in amazement. The reason he was upset was because he thought I saw through him too easily. How bizarre. I'd never expended so much effort to understand someone in all my life - or rather existence, as life was hardly the right word.

I did not truly have a life.

"On the contrary," I disagreed, feeling strangely...wary, as if there were some hidden danger here that I was failing to see. I was suddenly on edge, the premonition making me anxious. "I find you very difficult to read."

"You must be a good reader then," he guessed, making his own assumption that was, again, right on target.

"Usually," I agreed.

I smiled at him widely then, letting my lips pull back to expose the rows of gleaming, razor sharp teeth behind them.

It was a stupid thing to do, but I was abruptly, unexpectedly desperate to get some kind of warning through to the boy. His body was closer to me than before, having shifted unconsciously in the course of our conversation. All the little markers and signs that were sufficient to scare off the rest of humanity did not seem to be working on him. Why did he not cringe away from me in terror? Surely he had seen enough of my darker side to realize the danger, intuitive as he seemed to be.

I didn't get to see if my warning had the intended effect. Mr. Banner called for the class's attention just then, and he turned away from me at once. He seemed a little relieved for the interruption, so maybe he understood unconsciously.

I hoped he did.

I recognized the fascination growing inside me, even as I tried to root it out. I could not afford to find Beau Swan interesting. Or rather, he could not afford that. Already, I was anxious for another chance to talk to him. I wanted to know more about his mother, his life before he came here, his relationship with his father. All the meaningless details that would flesh out his character further. But every second I spent with him was a mistake, a risk he shouldn't have to take.

Absentmindedly, he tossed his book open fast and just at the moment that I allowed myself another breath. A particularly concentrated wave of his scent hit the back of my throat.

It was like the first day - like the wrecking ball. The pain of the burning dryness made me dizzy. I had to grasp the table again to keep myself in my seat. This time I had slightly more control. I didn't break anything, at least. The monster growled inside me, but took no pleasure in my pain. He was too tightly bound. For the moment.

I stopped breathing altogether, and leaned as far from the boy as I could.

No, I could not afford to find him fascinating. The more interesting I found him, the more likely it was that I would kill him. I'd already made two minor slips today. Would I make a third, one that was not minor?

As soon as the bell sounded, I fled from the classroom - probably destroying whatever impression of politeness I'd halfway constructed in the course of the hour. Again, I gasped at the clean, wet air outside like it was a healing attar. I hurried to put as much distance between myself and the boy as was possible.

Emmett waited for me outside the door of our Spanish class. He read my wild expression for a moment.

How did it go? he wondered warily.

"Nobody died," I mumbled.

I guess that's something. When I saw Alice ditching there at the end, I thought...

As we walked into the classroom, I saw his memory from just a few moments ago, seen through the open door of his last class: Alice walking briskly and blank-faced across the grounds toward the science building. I felt his remembered urge to get up and join her, and then his decision to stay. If Alice needed his help, she would ask...

I closed my eyes in horror and disgust as I slumped into my seat. "I hadn't realized that it was that close. I didn't think I was going to...I didn't see that it was that bad," I whispered.

It wasn't, he reassured me. Nobody died, right?

"Right," I said through my teeth. "Not this time."

Maybe it will get easier.

"Sure."

Or, maybe you kill him. He shrugged. You wouldn't be the first one to mess up. No one would judge you too harshly. Sometimes a person just smells too good. I'm impressed you've lasted this long.

"Not helping, Emmett."

I was revolted by his acceptance of the idea that I would kill the boy, that this was somehow inevitable. Was it his fault that he smelled so good?

I know when it happened to me..., he reminisced, taking me back with him half a century, to a country lane at dusk, where a middle-aged women was taking her dried sheets down from a line strung between apple trees. The scent of apples hung heavy in the air - the harvest was over and the rejected fruits were scattered on the ground, the bruises in their skin leaking their fragrance out in thick clouds. A fresh-mowed field of hay was a background to that scent, a harmony. He walked up the lane, all.

all but oblivious

to the woman, on an errand for Rosalie. The sky was purple overhead, orange over the western trees.

He would have continued up the meandering cart path and there would have been no reason to

remember the evening, except that a sudden night breeze blew the white sheets out like sails and

fanned the woman's scent across Emmett's face.

"Ah," I groaned quietly. As if my own remembered thirst was not enough.

I know. I didn't last half a second. I didn't even think about resisting.

His memory became far too explicit for me to stand. I jumped to my feet, my teeth locked hard enough

cut through steel.

"Esta bien, Edward?" Senora Goff asked, startled by my sudden movement. I could see my face in her

mind, and I knew that I looked far from well.

"Me perdona," I muttered, as I darted for the door.

"Emmett-por favor, puedas tu ayuda a tu hermano?" she asked, gesturing helplessly toward me as I

rushed out of the room.

"Sure," I heard him say. And then he was right behind me.

He followed me to the far side of the building, where he caught up to me and put his hand on my

shoulder.

I shoved his hand away with unnecessary force. It would have shattered the bones in a human hand, and

the bones in the arm attached to it.

"Sorry, Edward."

"I know." I drew in deep gasps of air, trying to clear my head and my lungs.

"Is it as bad as that?" he asked, trying not to think of the scent and the flavor of his memory as he asked,

and not quite succeeding.

"Worse, Emmett, worse."

He was quiet for a moment.

Maybe...

"No, it would not be better if I got it over with. Go back to class, Emmett. I want to be alone."

He turned without another word or thought and walked quickly away. He would tell the Spanish teacher

that I was sick, or ditching, or a dangerously out of control vampire. Did his excuse really matter? Maybe

I wasn't coming back. Maybe I had to leave.

I went to my car again, to wait for school to end. To hide. Again.

I should have spent the time making decisions or trying to bolster my resolve, but, like an addict, I found

myself searching through the babble of thoughts emanating from the school buildings. The familiar

voices stood out, but I wasn't interested in listening to Alice's visions or Rosalie's complaints right now. I

found Jeremy easily, but the boy was not with him, so I continued searching.

Makayla Newton's thoughts caught my attention, and I located him at last, in gym with her. She was

unhappy, because I'd spoken to him today in biology. She was running over his response when she'd

brought the subject up...

...I've never seen him actually talk to anyone for more than a word here or there. Of course he would

decide to find Beau interesting. I don't like the way he looks at him maybe that's why Cullen turned me down maybe he likes boys.

But he didn't seem too excited about him. What did he say? 'Wonder what was with him last Monday.'

Something like that. Didn't sound like he cared. It couldn't have been much of a conversation...

She talked herself out of her pessimism in that way, cheered by the idea that Beau had not been

interested in his exchange with me and that he wasn't gay. This annoyed me quite a bit more than was acceptable, so I stopped

listening to her.

I put a CD of violent music into the stereo, and then turned it up until it drowned out other voices. I had

to concentrate on the music very hard to keep myself from drifting back to Makayla Newton's thoughts, to

spy on the unsuspecting boy...

I cheated a few times, as the hour drew to a close. Not spying, I tried to convince myself. I was just

preparing. I wanted to know exactly when he would leave the gym, when he would be in the parking

lot. I didn't want him to take me by surprise.

As the students started to file out of the gym doors, I got out of my car, not sure why I did it. The rain

was light -I ignored it as it slowly saturated my hair.

Did I want him to see me here? Did I hope he would come to speak to me? What was I doing?

I didn't move, though I tried to convince myself to get back in the car, knowing my behavior was

reprehensible. I kept my arms folded across my chest and breathed very shallowly as I watched him walk

slowly toward me, his mouth turning down at the corners. He didn't look at me. A few times he

glanced up at the clouds with a grimace, as if they offended him.

I was disappointed when he reached his car before he had to pass me. Would he have spoken to me?

Would I have spoken to him?

He got into a faded red Chevy truck, a rusted behemoth that was older than his father. I watched him

start the truck-the old engine roared louder than any other vehicle in the lot-and then hold his hands

out toward the heating vents. The cold was uncomfortable to him-he didn't like it. He combed his

fingers through his thick short hair, pulling short locks through the stream of hot air like he was trying to dry them.

I imagined what the cab of that truck would smell like, and then quickly drove out the thought.

He glanced around as he prepared to back out, and finally looked in my direction. He stared back at

me for only half a second, and all I could read in his eyes was surprise before he tore his eyes away

and jerked the truck into reverse. And then squealed to a stop again, the back end of the truck missing a

collision with Erin Teague's compact by mere inches.

He stared into his rearview mirror, his mouth hanging open with chagrin. When the other car had

pulled past him, he checked all his blind spots twice and then inched out the parking space so

cautiously that it made me grin. It was like he thought he was dangerous in his decrepit truck.

The thought of Beau Swan being dangerous to anyone, no matter what he was driving, had me laughing

while the boy drove past me, staring straight ahead.


End file.
